degenerating to sour old maids--envious, back-biting,
wretched, because life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all,
reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to
gain that position and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is
denied. Fathers! cannot you alter these things? Perhaps not all at once;
but consider the matter well when it is brought before you, receive it
as a theme worthy of thought; do not dismiss it with an idle jest or an
unmanly insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters, and not to
blush for them; then seek for them an interest and an occupation which
shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the mischief-making
tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered; they will still
be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you. Cultivate
them--give them scope and work; they will be your gayest companions in
health, your tenderest nurses in sickness, your most faithful prop in
age."

CHAPTER XXIII.

AN EVENING OUT.

One fine summer day that Caroline had spent entirely alone (her uncle
being at Whinbury), and whose long, bright, noiseless, breezeless,
cloudless hours (how many they seemed since sunrise!) had been to her as
desolate as if they had gone over her head in the shadowless and
trackless wastes of Sahara, instead of in the blooming garden of an
English home, she was sitting in the alcove--her task of work on her
knee, her fingers assiduously plying the needle, her eyes following and
regulating their movements, her brain working restlessly--when Fanny
came to the door, looked round over the lawn and borders, and not seeing
her whom she sought, called out, "Miss Caroline!"

A low voice answered "Fanny!" It issued from the alcove, and thither
Fanny hastened, a note in her hand, which she delivered to fingers that
hardly seemed to have nerve to hold it. Miss Helstone did not ask whence
it came, and she did not look at it; she let it drop amongst the folds
of her work.

"Joe Scott's son, Harry, brought it," said Fanny.

The girl was no enchantress, and knew no magic spell; yet what she said
took almost magical effect on her young mistress. She lifted her head
with the quick motion of revived sensation; she shot, not a languid, but
a lifelike, questioning glance at Fanny.

"Harry Scott! who sent him?"

"He came from the Hollow."

The dropped note was snatched up eagerly, the seal was broken--it was
read in two seconds