ove of the principles of the family.
They are Jacobinical."

"Very well," said Caroline quietly. She acquiesced then. There was no
vexed flushing of the face, no gathering tears; the shadowy
thoughtfulness which had covered her features ere Mr. Helstone spoke
remained undisturbed; she was obedient.

Yes, perfectly; because the mandate coincided with her own previous
judgment; because it was now become pain to her to go to Hollow's
Cottage; nothing met her there but disappointment. Hope and love had
quitted that little tenement, for Robert seemed to have deserted its
precincts. Whenever she asked after him--which she very seldom did,
since the mere utterance of his name made her face grow hot--the answer
was, he was from home, or he was quite taken up with business. Hortense
feared he was killing himself by application. He scarcely ever took a
meal in the house; he lived in the counting-house.

At church only Caroline had the chance of seeing him, and there she
rarely looked at him. It was both too much pain and too much pleasure
to look--it excited too much emotion; and that it was all wasted emotion
she had learned well to comprehend.

Once, on a dark, wet Sunday, when there were few people at church, and
when especially certain ladies were absent, of whose observant faculties
and tomahawk tongues Caroline stood in awe, she had allowed her eye to
seek Robert's pew, and to rest awhile on its occupant. He was there
alone. Hortense had been kept at home by prudent considerations relative
to the rain and a new spring _chapeau_. During the sermon he sat with
folded arms and eyes cast down, looking very sad and abstracted. When
depressed, the very hue of his face seemed more dusk than when he
smiled, and to-day cheek and forehead wore their most tintless and sober
olive. By instinct Caroline knew, as she examined that clouded
countenance, that his thoughts were running in no familiar or kindly
channel; that they were far away, not merely from her, but from all
which she could comprehend, or in which she could sympathize. Nothing
that they had ever talked of together was now in his mind: he was wrapt
from her by interests and responsibilities in which it was deemed such
as she could have no part.

Caroline meditated in her own way on the subject; speculated on his
feelings, on his life, on his fears, on his fate; mused over the mystery
of "business," tried to comprehend more about it than had ever been told
her--to unde