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 Caroline did not need the injunction: glad was she to lay by the brown holland child's-slip she was trimming with braid for the Jew's-basket, to hasten up-stairs, cover her curls with her straw bonnet, and throw round her shoulders the black silk scarf, whose simple drapery suited as well her shape as its dark hue set off the purity of her dress and the fairness of her face; glad was she to escape for a few hours the solitude, the sadness, the nightmare of her life; glad to run down the green lane sloping to the Hollow, to scent the fragrance of hedge-flowers sweeter than the perfume of moss-rose or lily. True, she knew Robert was not at the cottage; but it was delight to go where he had lately been: so long, so totally separated from him, merely to see his home, to enter the room where he had that morning sat, felt like a reunion. As such it revived her; and then Illusion was again following her in Peri-mask: the soft agitation of wings caressed her cheek, and the air, breathing from the blue summer sky, bore a voice which whispered—"Robert may come home while you are in his house; and then, at least, you may look in his face—at least you may give him your hand: perhaps, for a minute, you may sit beside him."

"Silence!" was her austere response: but she loved the comforter and the consolation.

Miss Moore probably caught from the window the