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 “No.”

“You are so secure of your own intentions?”

“I suppose so.”

“What are they, Caroline?”

“Only to ease my mind by expressing for once part of what I think; and then to make you better satisfied with yourself.”

“By assuring me that my kinswoman is my sincere friend?”

“Just so; I am your sincere friend, Robert.”

“And I am—what chance and change shall make me, Lina.”

“Not my enemy, however?”

The answer was cut short by Sarah and her mistress entering the kitchen together in some commotion. They had been improving the time which Mr. Moore and Miss Helstone had spent in dialogue by a short dispute on the subject of “café au lait,” which Sarah said was the queerest mess she ever saw, and a waste of God’s good gifts, as it was “the nature of coffee to be boiled in water;” and which Mademoiselle affirmed to be “un breuvage royal,” a thousand times too good for the mean person who objected to it.

The former occupants of the kitchen now withdrew into the parlour. Before Hortense followed them thither, Caroline had only time again to question, “Not my enemy, Robert?” And Moore, quaker-like, had replied with another query, “Could I be?” and then, seating himself at the table, had settled Caroline at his side.