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 reasonbly 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 residing since their marriage, to see Mrs. Lyndsay and Caroline at Paris, and implore their influence to obtain a reconciliation with her father.
Matilda soon learned from Mrs. Lyndsay, who affected the most enchanting candor, the nature of the engagement between Caroline and Darrell. She communicated the information to Jasper, who viewed it with very natural alarm. By reconciliation with Guy Darrell, Jasper understood something solid and practical—not a mere sentimental pardon, added to that paltry stipend of £700 a-year which he had just obtained—but the restoration to all her rights and expectancies of the heiress he had supposed himself to marry. He had by no means relinquished the belief that sooner or later Darrell would listen to the Voice of Nature, and settle all his fortune on his only child. But then, for the Voice of Nature to have fair play, it was clear that there should be no other child to plead for. And if Darrell were to marry again, and to have sons, what a dreadful dilemma it would be for the Voice of Nature! Jasper was not long in discovering that Caroline's engagement was not less unwelcome to Mrs. Lyndsay than to himself, and that she was disposed to connive at any means by which it might be annulled. Matilda was first employed to weaken the bond it was so desirable to sever. Matilda did not reproach, but she wept. She was sure now that she should be an outcast—her children beggars. Mrs. Lyndsay worked up this complaint with adroitest skill. Was Caroline sure that it was not most dishonorable—most treacherous—to rob her own earliest friend of the patrimony that would otherwise return to Matilda with Darrell's pardon? This idea became exquisitely painful to the high-spirited Caroline, but it could not counterpoise the conviction of the greater pain she should occasion to the breast that so confided in her faith, if
