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 had brought aid, and from the moment she was then rescued from him she had never seen him, except as a dead man in his coffin.

That was her father: also she had a mother; though Mr. Helstone never spoke to her of that mother; though she could not remember having seen her: but that she was alive she knew. This mother was then the drunkard’s wife: what had their marriage been? Caroline, turning from the lattice whence she had been watching the starlings (though without seeing them), in a low voice, and with a sad bitter tone, thus broke the silence of the room:—

“You term marriage, miserable, I suppose, from what you saw of my father’s and mother’s. If my mother suffered what I suffered when I was with papa, she must have had a dreadful life.”

Mr. Helstone, thus addressed, wheeled about in his chair, and looked over his spectacles at his niece: he was taken aback.

Her father and mother! What had put it into her head to mention her father and mother, of whom he had never, during the twelve years she had lived with him, spoken to her? That the thoughts were self-matured; that she had any recollections or speculations about her parents, he could not fancy.

“Your father and mother? Who has been talking to you about them?”

“Nobody; but I remember something of what papa was, and I pity mama. Where is she?”