more reasonable. The beautiful young heiress, who was an unconscious and involuntary element in the standing grievance of Mrs. Carruthers's life, was the only child of Mr. Carruthers's brother, and the sole inheritor of his property. Her father had died while she was a little child, and her mother's method of educating her has been already described. She was attached to her uncle, but was afraid of him; and she was happier and more at ease at the Sycamores than at Poynings. Of course Mr. Carruthers did not suspect his niece of any such depravity of taste. It never occurred to him that any one could fancy himself or herself happier anywhere on the face of the created globe than at Poynings; and so Clare escaped the condemnation which she would otherwise have received in no stinted measure. Accustomed to attach a wonderful amount of importance to duties and responsibilities which were his, if their due fulfilment could add to his dignity and reputation, Mr. Carruthers was a model of the uncle and guardian. He really liked Clare very much indeed, and he was fully persuaded that he loved her--a distinction he would have learned to draw only if Clare had been deprived of her possessions, and rendered dependent on him. He spoke of her as "my brother's heiress," and so thought of her, not as "my brother's orphan child;" but in all external and material respects Mr. Carruthers of Poynings was an admirable guardian, and a highly respectable specimen of the uncle tribe. He would have been deeply shocked had he discovered that any young lady in the county was better dressed, better mounted, more obsequiously waited upon, more accomplished, or regarded by society as in any way more favoured by fortune than Miss Carruthers--not of Poynings, indeed, but the next thing to it, and likely at some future day to enjoy that distinction. Mr. Carruthers did not regret that he was childless; he had never cared for children, and, though not a keenly observant person, he had noticed occasionally that the importance of a rich man's heir was apt, in this irrepressibly anticipative world, to outweigh the importance of the rich man himself. No Carruthers on record had ever had a large family, and, for his own part, he liked the idea of a female heir to the joint property of himself and his brother, who should carry her own name in addition to her husband's. He was determined on that. Unless Clare married a nobleman, her husband should take the name of Carruthers. Carruthers of Poynings must not die out of the land. The strange jealousy which was one of the underlying constituents of Mr. Carruthers's character came into play with regard to his niece and his wife. Mrs. Carruthers loved the girl, and would gladly have acted the part of a mother to her; and as Clare's own mother had been a remarkably mild specimen of maternal duty and affection, she could have replaced that lady considerably to Clare's advantage. But she had soon perceived that