a
flute breathing tenderness; and then, when the world was not by to
listen, discords that split the nerves and curdled the blood--sounds to
inspire insanity."

"It seems so natural, mamma, to ask you for this and that. I shall want
nobody but you to be near me, or to do anything for me. But do not let
me be troublesome. Check me if I encroach."

"You must not depend on me to check you; you must keep guard over
yourself. I have little moral courage; the want of it is my bane. It is
that which has made me an unnatural parent--which has kept me apart from
my child during the ten years which have elapsed since my husband's
death left me at liberty to claim her. It was that which first unnerved
my arms and permitted the infant I might have retained a while longer to
be snatched prematurely from their embrace."

"How, mamma?"

"I let you go as a babe, because you were pretty, and I feared your
loveliness, deeming it the stamp of perversity. They sent me your
portrait, taken at eight years old; that portrait confirmed my fears.
Had it shown me a sunburnt little rustic--a heavy, blunt-featured,
commonplace child--I should have hastened to claim you; but there, under
the silver paper, I saw blooming the delicacy of an aristocratic
flower--'little lady' was written on every trait. I had too recently
crawled from under the yoke of the fine gentleman--escaped galled,
crushed, paralyzed, dying--to dare to encounter his still finer and most
fairy-like representative. My sweet little lady overwhelmed me with
dismay; her air of native elegance froze my very marrow. In my
experience I had not met with truth, modesty, good principle as the
concomitants of beauty. A form so straight and fine, I argued, must
conceal a mind warped and cruel. I had little faith in the power of
education to rectify such a mind; or rather, I entirely misdoubted my
own ability to influence it. Caroline, I dared not undertake to rear
you. I resolved to leave you in your uncle's hands. Matthewson Helstone
I knew, if an austere, was an upright man. He and all the world thought
hardly of me for my strange, unmotherly resolve, and I deserved to be
misjudged."

"Mamma, why did you call yourself Mrs. Pryor?"

"It was a name in my mother's family. I adopted it that I might live
unmolested. My married name recalled too vividly my married life; I
could not bear it. Besides, threats were uttered of forcing me to return
to bondage. It could not be. Rather a bier