changed--a
wan shade seemed to circle them; her countenance was dejected--she was
not, in short, so pretty or so fresh as she used to be. She distantly
hinted this to Fanny, from whom she got no direct answer, only a remark
that people did vary in their looks, but that at her age a little
falling away signified nothing; she would soon come round again, and be
plumper and rosier than ever. Having given this assurance, Fanny showed
singular zeal in wrapping her up in warm shawls and handkerchiefs, till
Caroline, nearly smothered with the weight, was fain to resist further
additions.

She paid her visits--first to Miss Mann, for this was the most difficult
point. Miss Mann was certainly not quite a lovable person. Till now,
Caroline had always unhesitatingly declared she disliked her, and more
than once she had joined her cousin Robert in laughing at some of her
peculiarities. Moore was not habitually given to sarcasm, especially on
anything humbler or weaker than himself; but he had once or twice
happened to be in the room when Miss Mann had made a call on his sister,
and after listening to her conversation and viewing her features for a
time, he had gone out into the garden where his little cousin was
tending some of his favourite flowers, and while standing near and
watching her he had amused himself with comparing fair youth, delicate
and attractive, with shrivelled eld, livid and loveless, and in
jestingly repeating to a smiling girl the vinegar discourse of a
cankered old maid. Once on such an occasion Caroline had said to him,
looking up from the luxuriant creeper she was binding to its frame, "Ah!
Robert, you do not like old maids. I, too, should come under the lash of
your sarcasm if I were an old maid."

"You an old maid!" he had replied. "A piquant notion suggested by lips
of that tint and form. I can fancy you, though, at forty, quietly
dressed, pale and sunk, but still with that straight nose, white
forehead, and those soft eyes. I suppose, too, you will keep your voice,
which has another 'timbre' than that hard, deep organ of Miss Mann's.
Courage, Cary! Even at fifty you will not be repulsive."

"Miss Mann did not make herself, or tune her voice, Robert."

"Nature made her in the mood in which she makes her briars and thorns;
whereas for the creation of some women she reserves the May morning
hours, when with light and dew she wooes the primrose from the turf and
the lily from the wood-moss."

*