--yes, imprudent indeed, to have thrown right in his way a pretty
coquettish girl ("for Caroline is coquettish, Mr. Darrell; most girls so
pretty are at that silly age"). In short, she carried her point against
all the eloquence Darrell could employ, and covered her designs by the
semblance of the most delicate scruples, and the sacrifice of worldly
advantages to the prudence which belongs to high principle and
affectionate caution.

And what were Caroline's real sentiments for Guy Darrell? She understood
them-now on looking back. She saw herself as she was then--as she had
stood under the beech-tree, when the heavenly pity that was at the core
of her nature--when the venerating, grateful affection that had grown
with her growth made her yearn to be a solace and a joy to that grand and
solitary life. Love him! Oh certainly she loved him, devotedly, fondly;
but it was with the love of a child. She had not awakened then to the
love of woman. Removed from his presence, suddenly thrown into the great
world--yes, Darrell had sketched the picture with a stern, but not
altogether an untruthful hand. He had not, however, fairly estimated the
inevitable influence which a mother such as Mrs. Lyndsay would exercise
over a girl so wholly inexperienced--so guileless, so unsuspecting, and
so filially devoted. He could not appreciate--no man can--the mightiness
of female cunning. He could not see how mesh upon mesh the soft Mrs.
Lyndsay (pretty woman with pretty manners) wove her web round the
"cousins," until Caroline, who at first had thought of the silent fair-
haired young man only as the Head of her House, pleased with attentions
that kept aloof admirers of whom she thought Guy Darrell might be more
reasonably jealous, was appalled to hear her mother tell her that she was
either the most heartless of coquettes, or poor Montfort was the most
ill-used of men. But at this time Jasper Losely, under his name of
Hammond, brought his wife from the French town at which they had been