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fine summer day that Caroline had spent entirely alone (her uncle being at Whinbury), and whose long, bright, noiseless, breezeless, cloudless hours (how many they seemed since sunrise!) had been to her as desolate as if they had gone over her head in the shadowless and trackless wastes of Zahara, instead of in the blooming garden of an English home, she was sitting in the alcove,—her task of work on her knee, her fingers assiduously plying the needle, her eyes following and regulating their movements, her brain working restlessly,—when Fanny came to the door, looked round over the lawn and borders, and not seeing her whom she sought, called out—"Miss Caroline!"

A low voice answered—"Fanny!" It issued from the alcove, and thither Fanny hastened—a note in her hand, which she delivered to fingers that hardly seemed to have nerve to hold it. Miss