m
a corner where she was sitting on the carpet at the foot of a bookcase,
with a volume spread open on her knee.--"Miss Helstone, how do you do?"
she added, directing a brief glance to the person addressed, and then
again casting down her gray, remarkable eyes on the book and returning
to the study of its pages.

Caroline stole a quiet gaze towards her, dwelling on her young, absorbed
countenance, and observing a certain unconscious movement of the mouth
as she read--a movement full of character. Caroline had tact, and she
had fine instinct. She felt that Rose Yorke was a peculiar child--one of
the unique; she knew how to treat her. Approaching quietly, she knelt on
the carpet at her side, and looked over her little shoulder at her book.
It was a romance of Mrs. Radcliffe's--"The Italian."

Caroline read on with her, making no remark. Presently Rose showed her
the attention of asking, ere she turned the leaf, "Are you ready?"

Caroline only nodded.

"Do you like it?" inquired Rose ere long.

"Long since, when I read it as a child, I was wonderfully taken with
it."

"Why?"

"It seemed to open with such promise--such foreboding of a most strange
tale to be unfolded."

"And in reading it you feel as if you were far away from England--really
in Italy--under another sort of sky--that blue sky of the south which
travellers describe."

"You are sensible of that, Rose?"

"It makes me long to travel, Miss Helstone."

"When you are a woman, perhaps, you may be able to gratify your wish."

"I mean to make a way to do so, if one is not made for me. I cannot live
always in Briarfield. The whole world is not very large compared with
creation. I must see the outside of our own round planet, at least."

"How much of its outside?"

"First this hemisphere where we live; then the other. I am resolved that
my life shall be a life. Not a black trance like the toad's, buried in
marble; nor a long, slow death like yours in Briarfield rectory."

"Like mine! what can you mean, child?"

"Might you not as well be tediously dying as for ever shut up in that
glebe-house--a place that, when I pass it, always reminds me of a
windowed grave? I never see any movement about the door. I never hear a
sound from the wall. I believe smoke never issues from the chimneys.
What do you do there?"

"I sew, I read, I learn lessons."

"Are you happy?"

"Should I be happy wandering alone in strange countries as you wish to
do?"

"Much ha