ty of content under peculiar
circumstances, such as are seldom combined; but it is as well not to run
the risk--you may make fatal mistakes. Be satisfied, my dear. Let all
the single be satisfied with their freedom."

"You echo my uncle's words!" exclaimed Caroline, in a tone of dismay.
"You speak like Mrs. Yorke in her most gloomy moments, like Miss Mann
when she is most sourly and hypochondriacally disposed. This is
terrible!"

"No, it is only true. O child, you have only lived the pleasant morning
time of life; the hot, weary noon, the sad evening, the sunless night,
are yet to come for you. Mr. Helstone, you say, talks as I talk; and I
wonder how Mrs. Matthewson Helstone would have talked had she been
living. She died! she died!"

"And, alas! my own mother and father----" exclaimed Caroline, struck by
a sombre recollection.

"What of them?"

"Did I never tell you that they were separated?"

"I have heard it."

"They must, then, have been very miserable."

"You see all _facts_ go to prove what I say."

"In this case there ought to be no such thing as marriage."

"There ought, my dear, were it only to prove that this life is a mere
state of probation, wherein neither rest nor recompense is to be
vouchsafed."

"But your own marriage, Mrs. Pryor?"

Mrs. Pryor shrank and shuddered as if a rude finger had pressed a naked
nerve. Caroline felt she had touched what would not bear the slightest
contact.

"My marriage was unhappy," said the lady, summoning courage at last;
"but yet----" She hesitated.

"But yet," suggested Caroline, "not immitigably wretched?"

"Not in its results, at least. No," she added, in a softer tone; "God
mingles something of the balm of mercy even in vials of the most
corrosive woe. He can so turn events that from the very same blind, rash
act whence sprang the curse of half our life may flow the blessing of
the remainder. Then I am of a peculiar disposition--I own that--far from
facile, without address, in some points eccentric. I ought never to have
married. Mine is not the nature easily to find a duplicate or likely to
assimilate with a contrast. I was quite aware of my own ineligibility;
and if I had not been so miserable as a governess, I never should have
married; and then----"

Caroline's eyes asked her to proceed. They entreated her to break the
thick cloud of despair which her previous words had seemed to spread
over life.

"And then, my dear, Mr.--that is, the gentlem