Mrs. Pryor never paid compliments, and seldom indulged in remarks, favourable or otherwise, on personal appearance. On the present occasion she only swept Caroline’s curls from her cheek as she took a seat near her, caressed the oval outline, and observed:

‘You get somewhat thin, my love, and somewhat pale. Do you sleep well? Your eyes have a languid look’; and she gazed at her anxiously.

‘I sometimes dream melancholy dreams,’ answered Caroline; ‘and if I lie awake for an hour or two in the night, I am continually thinking of the Rectory as a dreary old place. You know it is very near the churchyard; the back part of the house is extremely ancient, and it is said that the out-kitchens there were once enclosed in the churchyard, and that there are graves under them. I rather long to leave the Rectory.’

‘My dear! You are surely not superstitious?’

‘No, Mrs. Pryor; but I think I grow what is called nervous. I see things under a darker aspect than I used to do. I have fears I never used to have—not of ghosts, but of omens and disastrous events, and I have an inexpressible weight on my mind which I would give the world to shake off, and I cannot do it.’

‘Strange!’ cried Shirley. ‘I never feel so.’

Mrs. Pryor said nothing.

‘Fine weather, pleasant days, pleasant scenes are powerless to give me pleasure,’ continued Caroline. ‘Calm evenings are not calm to me; moonlight, which I used to think mild, now only looks mournful. Is this weakness of mind, Mrs. Pryor, or what is it? I cannot help it, I often struggle against it, I reason, but reason and effort make no difference.’

‘You should take more exercise,’ said Mrs. Pryor.

‘Exercise! I exercise sufficiently: I exercise till I am ready to drop.’

‘My dear, you should go from home.’

‘Mrs. Pryor, I should like to go from home, but not on any purposeless excursion or visit. I wish to be a governess, as you have been. It would oblige me greatly if you would speak to my uncle on the subject.’

‘Nonsense!’ broke in Shirley. ‘What an idea! Be a governess! Better be a slave at once. Where is the necessity of it? Why should you dream of such a painful step?’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Pryor, ‘you are very young to be a governess, and not sufficiently robust. The duties a governess undertakes are often severe.’

‘And I believe I want severe duties to occupy me.’

‘Occupy you!’ cried Shirley. ‘When are you idle? I never saw a more industrious girl than you: you are always at work. Come,’ she continued—‘come and sit by my side, and take some tea to refresh you. You don’t care much for my friendship, then, that you wish to leave me?’

‘Indeed I do, Shirley; and I don’t wish to leave you. I shall never find another friend so dear.’

At which words Miss Keeldar put her hand into Caroline’s with an impulsively affectionate movement, which was well seconded by the expression of her face.

‘If you think so, you had better make much of me,’ she said, ‘and not run away from me. I hate to part with those to whom I am become attached. Mrs. Pryor there sometimes talks of leaving me, and says I