daughter: and, mama, take your supper here; don't leave me for one minute to-night."
"Oh, Caroline! it is well you are gentle. You will say to me go, and I shall go; come, and I shall come; do this, and I shall do it. You inherit a certain manner as well as certain features. It will be always 'mama' prefacing a mandate: softly spoken though, from you, thank God! Well" (she added, under her breath), "he spoke softly too, once,—like 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, mama, 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, mama?"
"I let you go as a babe, because you were pretty, and I feared your loveliness; deeming it the stamp
