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166 not in love, and I have in your case hope that you never will be any way different to what you are at the present moment." Helen pitched herself still farther into shadow.

"When you were all little, it was a peculiar object with me (and, in fact, the only point I studied in your education) to preserve you from a weakness to which I had never given way myself, or, at least, not in the grand affair of matrimony, and merely as an hour's amusement, en passant, at any other time. I imputed a good deal of my strength of character, in this respect, to the circumstance of my losing my mother early in life, by which means I escaped happily that kind of conduct called fondling, which is sure to awaken sensibility prematurely; and by rendering the exercise of the affections necessary for happiness, and satisfactory to that end, induces people to resign the higher purposes of existence, and lays a certain foundation for love itself. I saw all this in other persons, and I did not discourage it in our tenantry, or other low people; but what was proper in their daughters was of course objectionable in the Misses Granard; and I can truly assert, I did my duty by you all. I had no moments of weakness, no bed times kissings, no morning fondlings, no little rewards for good girlism; cold and stern, I tried to brace the system, and hoped, that in its strength,