. A strange thing it
is how all time will converge itself, as it were, into the burning-glass
of a moment! There runs a popular superstition that it is thus, in the
instant of death; that our whole existence crowds itself on the glazing
eye--a panorama of all we have done on earth just as the soul restores
to the earth its garment. Certes, there are hours in our being, long
before the last and dreaded one, when this phenomenon comes to warn
us that, if memory were always active, time would be never gone.
Rose before this woman--who, whatever the justice of Darrell's bitter
reproaches, had a nature lovely enough to justify his anguish at her
loss--the image of herself at that turning point of life, when the
morning mists are dimmed on our way, yet when a path chosen is a fate
decided. Yes; she had excuses, not urged to the judge who sentenced, nor
estimated to their full extent by the stern equity with which, amidst
suffering and wrath, he had desired to weigh her cause.

Caroline's mother, Mrs. Lindsay, was one of those parents who acquire
an extraordinary influence over their children by the union of caressing
manners with obstinate resolves. She never lost control of her temper
nor hold on her object. A slight, delicate, languid creature too, who
would be sure to go into a consumption if unkindly crossed. With much
strong common sense, much knowledge of human nature, egotistical,
worldly, scheming, heartless, but withal so pleasing, so gentle, so
bewitchingly despotic, that it was like living with an electrobiologist,
who unnerves you by a look to knock you down with a feather. In only one
great purpose of her life had Mrs. Lyndsay failed. When Darrell, rich
by the rewards of his profession and the bequest of his namesake, had
entered Parliament, and risen into that repute which confers solid and
brilliant station, Mrs. Lyndsay conceived the idea of appropriating to
herself his honours and his wealth by a second Hymen. Having so long
been domesticated in his house during the life of Mrs. Darrell, an
intimacy as of near relations had been established between them. Her
soft manners attached to her his children; and after Mrs. Darrell's
death rendered it necessary that she should find a home of her own, she
had an excuse, in Matilda's affection for her and for Caroline, to be
more frequently before Darrell's eyes, and consulted by him yet more
frequently, than when actually a resident in his house. To her Darrell
confide