good can I do her? How can I amuse her?"

"Pshaw! Put your bonnet on."

"Is she proud, uncle?"

"Don't know. You hardly imagine she would show her pride to me, I
suppose? A chit like that would scarcely presume to give herself airs
with the rector of her parish, however rich she might be."

"No. But how did she behave to other people?"

"Didn't observe. She holds her head high, and probably can be saucy
enough where she dare. She wouldn't be a woman otherwise. There! Away
now for your bonnet at once!"

Not naturally very confident, a failure of physical strength and a
depression of spirits had not tended to increase Caroline's presence of
mind and ease of manner, or to give her additional courage to face
strangers, and she quailed, in spite of self-remonstrance, as she and
her uncle walked up the broad, paved approach leading from the gateway
of Fieldhead to its porch. She followed Mr. Helstone reluctantly through
that porch into the sombre old vestibule beyond.

Very sombre it was--long, vast, and dark; one latticed window lit it but
dimly. The wide old chimney contained now no fire, for the present warm
weather needed it not; it was filled instead with willow-boughs. The
gallery on high, opposite the entrance, was seen but in outline, so
shadowy became this hall towards its ceiling. Carved stags' heads, with
real antlers, looked down grotesquely from the walls. This was neither a
grand nor a comfortable house; within as without it was antique,
rambling, and incommodious. A property of a thousand a year belonged to
it, which property had descended, for lack of male heirs, on a female.
There were mercantile families in the district boasting twice the
income, but the Keeldars, by virtue of their antiquity, and their
distinction of lords of the manor, took the precedence of all.

Mr. and Miss Helstone were ushered into a parlour. Of course, as was to
be expected in such a Gothic old barrack, this parlour was lined with
oak: fine, dark, glossy panels compassed the walls gloomily and grandly.
Very handsome, reader, these shining brown panels are, very mellow in
colouring and tasteful in effect, but--if you know what a "spring clean"
is--very execrable and inhuman. Whoever, having the bowels of humanity,
has seen servants scrubbing at these polished wooden walls with
beeswaxed cloths on a warm May day must allow that they are "intolerable
and not to be endured;" and I cannot but secretly applaud the benevolent
barb