till I have learned it by
heart, and so made it partly mine."

Mr. Moore now sat silent for several minutes. It struck nine o'clock.
Sarah entered, and said that Mr. Helstone's servant was come for Miss
Caroline.

"Then the evening is gone already," she observed, "and it will be long,
I suppose, before I pass another here."

Hortense had been for some time nodding over her knitting; fallen into a
doze now, she made no response to the remark.

"You would have no objection to come here oftener of an evening?"
inquired Robert, as he took her folded mantle from the side-table, where
it still lay, and carefully wrapped it round her.

"I like to come here; but I have no desire to be intrusive. I am not
hinting to be asked; you must understand that."

"Oh! I understand thee, child. You sometimes lecture me for wishing to
be rich, Lina; but if I _were_ rich, you should live here always--at any
rate, you should live with me wherever my habitation might be."

"That would be pleasant; and if you were poor--ever so poor--it would
still be pleasant. Good-night, Robert."

"I promised to walk with you up to the rectory."

"I know you did; but I thought you had forgotten, and I hardly knew how
to remind you, though I wished to do it. But would you like to go? It is
a cold night, and as Fanny is come, there is no necessity----"

"Here is your muff; don't wake Hortense--come."

The half mile to the rectory was soon traversed. They parted in the
garden without kiss, scarcely with a pressure of hands; yet Robert sent
his cousin in excited and joyously troubled. He had been singularly kind
to her that day--not in phrase, compliment, profession, but in manner,
in look, and in soft and friendly tones.

For himself, he came home grave, almost morose. As he stood leaning on
his own yard-gate, musing in the watery moonlight all alone, the hushed,
dark mill before him, the hill-environed hollow round, he exclaimed,
abruptly,--

"This won't do! There's weakness--there's downright ruin in all this.
However," he added, dropping his voice, "the frenzy is quite temporary.
I know it very well; I have had it before. It will be gone to-morrow."

CHAPTER VII.

The Curates at Tea.

Caroline Helstone was just eighteen years old, and at eighteen the true
narrative of life is yet to be commenced. Before that time we sit
listening to a tale, a marvellous fiction, delightful sometimes, and sad
sometimes, almost always unreal. Before