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 a 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