o forlorn. Yet, doubtless, she reflected, it needed only habit to make
it practicable and agreeable to any one. It was despicable, she felt, to
pine sentimentally, to cherish secret griefs, vain memories, to be
inert, to waste youth in aching languor, to grow old doing nothing.

"I will bestir myself," was her resolution, "and try to be wise if I
cannot be good."

She proceeded to make inquiry of Miss Ainley if she could help her in
anything. Miss Ainley, glad of an assistant, told her that she could,
and indicated some poor families in Briarfield that it was desirable she
should visit, giving her likewise, at her further request, some work to
do for certain poor women who had many children, and who were unskilled
in using the needle for themselves.

Caroline went home, laid her plans, and took a resolve not to swerve
from them. She allotted a certain portion of her time for her various
studies, and a certain portion for doing anything Miss Ainley might
direct her to do. The remainder was to be spent in exercise; not a
moment was to be left for the indulgence of such fevered thoughts as had
poisoned last Sunday evening.

To do her justice, she executed her plans conscientiously,
perseveringly. It was very hard work at first--it was even hard work to
the end--but it helped her to stem and keep down anguish; it forced her
to be employed; it forbade her to brood; and gleams of satisfaction
chequered her gray life here and there when she found she had done good,
imparted pleasure, or allayed suffering.

Yet I must speak truth. These efforts brought her neither health of body
nor continued peace of mind. With them all she wasted, grew more joyless
and more wan; with them all her memory kept harping on the name of
Robert Moore; an elegy over the past still rung constantly in her ear; a
funereal inward cry haunted and harassed her; the heaviness of a broken
spirit, and of pining and palsying faculties, settled slow on her
buoyant youth. Winter seemed conquering her spring; the mind's soil and
its treasures were freezing gradually to barren stagnation.

CHAPTER XI.

FIELDHEAD.

Yet Caroline refused tamely to succumb. She had native strength in her
girl's heart, and she used it. Men and women never struggle so hard as
when they struggle alone, without witness, counsellor, or confidant,
unencouraged, unadvised, and unpitied.

Miss Helstone was in this position. Her sufferings were her only spur,
and being very