d
wholly flattered. Half deceived! had it not been so she would in all
probability have put her to the wicket, and shut her out. Had she known
clearly to whose account the chief share of this childlike joy was to be
placed, Hortense would most likely have felt both shocked and incensed.
Sisters do not like young ladies to fall in love with their brothers.
It seems, if not presumptuous, silly, weak, a delusion, an absurd
mistake. _They_ do not love these gentlemen--whatever sisterly affection
they may cherish towards them--and that others should, repels them with
a sense of crude romance. The first movement, in short, excited by such
discovery (as with many parents on finding their children to be in love)
is one of mixed impatience and contempt. Reason--if they be rational
people--corrects the false feeling in time; but if they be irrational,
it is never corrected, and the daughter or sister-in-law is disliked to
the end.

"You would expect to find me alone, from what I said in my note,"
observed Miss Moore, as she conducted Caroline towards the parlour; "but
it was written this morning: since dinner, company has come in."

And opening the door she made visible an ample spread of crimson skirts
overflowing the elbow-chair at the fireside, and above them, presiding
with dignity, a cap more awful than a crown. That cap had never come to
the cottage under a bonnet; no, it had been brought in a vast bag, or
rather a middle-sized balloon of black silk, held wide with whalebone.
The screed, or frill of the cap, stood a quarter of a yard broad round
the face of the wearer. The ribbon, flourishing in puffs and bows about
the head, was of the sort called love-ribbon. There was a good deal of
it, I may say, a very great deal. Mrs. Yorke wore the cap--it became
her; she wore the gown also--it suited her no less.

That great lady was come in a friendly way to take tea with Miss Moore.
It was almost as great and as rare a favour as if the queen were to go
uninvited to share pot-luck with one of her subjects. A higher mark of
distinction she could not show--she who in general scorned visiting and
tea-drinking, and held cheap and stigmatized as "gossips" every maid and
matron of the vicinage.

There was no mistake, however; Miss Moore _was_ a favourite with her.
She had evinced the fact more than once--evinced it by stopping to speak
to her in the churchyard on Sundays; by inviting her, almost hospitably,
to come to Briarmains; evi