Mrs. Mason would have acknowledged this in a cooler moment. "Why did that Tyrrett girl laugh at me, then? And why did Carry say she spent her evenings here?" cried she. "The gentleman I see was young Anthony Dare: and Carry had better bury herself alive than be drawn aside by his nonsense." "Much better," acquiesced Charlotte. "Where is Caroline?" "Under lock and key," said Mrs. Mason. "Under lock and key!" echoed Charlotte. "Yes; under lock and key; and there she shall stop. She was out all this blessed morning with Eliza Tyrrett, and never walked herself in till after Mark had had his dinner and was gone. So then I began upon her. My temper was up, and I didn't spare her. I vowed I'd tell Mark what I had seen and heard, and what sort of a wolf she allowed to make her presents of fine clothes. With that she turned wild and flung up to her room in the cock-loft, and I followed and locked her in." "You have done very wrong," said Charlotte. "It is not by harshness that any good will be done with Caroline. You know her disposition: a child might lead her by kindness, but she rises up against harshness. My opinion is that she never would have given the least trouble at all had you made her a better home." This bold avowal took away Mrs. Mason's breath. "A better home!" cried she, when she could speak. "A better home! Fed upon French rolls and lobster salad and apricot tarts, and give her a lady's maid to hook-and-eye her gown for her! My heart! that beats all." "I don't speak of food, and that sort of thing," rejoined Charlotte. "If you had treated her with kind words instead of cross ones she would have been as good a girl as ever lived. Instead of that you have made your home unbearable; and so driven her out, with her dangerous good looks, to be told of them by the first idler who came across her: and that seems to have been Anthony Dare. Go home and let her out of where you have locked her in; do, Hetty Mason! Let her out, and speak kindly to her, and treat her as a sister; and you'll undo all the bad yet." "I shan't then!" was the passionate reply. "I'll see you and her hung first, before I speak kind to her to encourage her in her loose ways!" Mrs. Mason flung out of the house as she concluded, giving the door a bang which only had the effect of sending it open again. Charlotte sighed as she rose to close it: not only for any peril that Caroline Mason might be in, but for the general blindness, the distorted views of right and wrong, which seemed to obtain amidst the women of Honey Fair. CHAPTER III. THE DARES AT HOME.