Presently the niece was enclosed in her small bedroom; the door bolted, her white dressing-gown assumed, her long hair loosened and falling thick, soft, and wavy to her waist, and as, resting from the task of combing it out, she leaned her cheek on her hand and fixed her eyes on the carpet, before her rose, and close around her drew, the visions we see at eighteen years.

Her thoughts were speaking with her: speaking pleasantly, as it seemed, for she smiled as she listened. She looked pretty, meditating thus; but a brighter thing than she was in that apartment—the spirit of youthful Hope. According to this flattering prophet, she was to know disappointment, to feel chill no more: she had entered on the dawn of a summer day—no false dawn, but the true spring of morning—and her sun would quickly rise. Impossible for her now to suspect that she was the sport of delusion; her expectations seemed warranted, the foundation on which they rested appeared solid.

‘When people love, the next step is, they marry,’ was her argument. ‘Now, I love Robert, and I feel sure that Robert loves me; I have thought so many a time before; to-day I felt it. When I looked up at him after repeating Ch\da\enier’s poem, his eyes (what handsome eyes he has!) sent the truth through my heart. Sometimes I am afraid to speak to him, lest I should be too frank, lest I should seem forward, for I have more than once regretted bitterly overflowing, superfluous words, and feared I had said more than he expected me to say, and that he would disapprove what he might deem my indiscretion; now, to-night, I could have ventured to express any thought, he was so indulgent. How kind he was as we walked up the lane! He does not flatter or say foolish things; his love-making (friendship, I mean; of course I don’t yet account him my lover, but I hope he will be so some day) is not like what we read of in books—it is far better—original, quiet, manly, sincere. I do like him! I would be an excellent wife to him if he did marry me; I would tell him of his faults (for he has a few faults), but I would study his comfort, and cherish him, and do my best to make him happy. Now, I am sure he will not be cold to-morrow; I feel almost certain that to-morrow evening he will either come here or ask me to go there.’

She recommenced combing her hair, long as a mermaid’s. Turning her head as she arranged it, she saw her own face and form in the glass. Such reflections are soberizing to plain people; their own eyes are not enchanted with the image; they are confident then that the eyes of others can see in it no fascination. But the fair must naturally draw other conclusions; the picture is charming, and must charm. Caroline saw a shape, a head, that, daguerreotyped in that attitude, and with that expression, would have been lovely; she could not choose but derive from the spectacle confirmation to her hopes. It was then in undiminished gladness she sought her couch.

And in undiminished gladness she rose the next day. As she entered her uncle’s breakfast-room, and with soft cheerfulness wished him good-morning, even that little man of bronze himself thought, for an instant, his niece was growing ‘a fine girl.’ Generally she was quiet and timid with him—very docile, but not communicative; this morning, however, she found many things to say. Slight topics alone might be discussed between them, for with a woman—a girl—Mr. Helstone would touch on no other. She had taken an early walk in the garden, and she told him what flowers were beginning to spring there; she inquired when the gardener was to come and trim the borders; she informed him that certain starlings were beginning to build their nests in the church-tower (Briarfield church was close to Briarfield Rectory)—she wondered the tolling of the bells in the belfry did not scare them.

Mr. Helstone opined that ‘they were like other fools who had just paired—insensible to inconvenience just for the moment.’

Caroline, made perhaps a little too courageous by her temporary good spirits, here hazarded a remark of a kind she had never before ventured to make on observations dropped by her revered relative.

‘Uncle,’ said she, ‘whenever you speak of marriage you speak of it scornfully. Do you think people shouldn’t marry?’

‘It is decidedly the wisest plan to remain single, especially for women.’