rstand its perplexities, liabilities, duties, exactions;
endeavoured to realize the state of mind of a "man of business," to
enter into it, feel what he would feel, aspire to what he would aspire.
Her earnest wish was to see things as they were, and not to be romantic.
By dint of effort she contrived to get a glimpse of the light of truth
here and there, and hoped that scant ray might suffice to guide her.

"Different, indeed," she concluded, "is Robert's mental condition to
mine. I think only of him; he has no room, no leisure, to think of me.
The feeling called love is and has been for two years the predominant
emotion of my heart--always there, always awake, always astir. Quite
other feelings absorb his reflections and govern his faculties. He is
rising now, going to leave the church, for service is over. Will he turn
his head towards this pew? No, not once. He has not one look for me.
That is hard. A kind glance would have made me happy till to-morrow. I
have not got it; he would not give it; he is gone. Strange that grief
should now almost choke me, because another human being's eye has failed
to greet mine."

That Sunday evening, Mr. Malone coming, as usual, to pass it with his
rector, Caroline withdrew after tea to her chamber. Fanny, knowing her
habits, had lit her a cheerful little fire, as the weather was so gusty
and chill. Closeted there, silent and solitary, what could she do but
think? She noiselessly paced to and fro the carpeted floor, her head
drooped, her hands folded. It was irksome to sit; the current of
reflection ran rapidly through her mind; to-night she was mutely
excited.

Mute was the room, mute the house. The double door of the study muffled
the voices of the gentlemen. The servants were quiet in the kitchen,
engaged with books their young mistress had lent them--books which she
had told them were "fit for Sunday reading." And she herself had another
of the same sort open on the table, but she could not read it. Its
theology was incomprehensible to her, and her own mind was too busy,
teeming, wandering, to listen to the language of another mind.

Then, too, her imagination was full of pictures--images of Moore, scenes
where he and she had been together; winter fireside sketches; a glowing
landscape of a hot summer afternoon passed with him in the bosom of
Nunnely Wood; divine vignettes of mild spring or mellow autumn moments,
when she had sat at his side in Hollow's Copse, listening to the