“Mother,” continued Caroline, turning eagerly, and seizing her mother’s hand, “my guide, my guardian, whenever you see me in any, the slightest inclination to coquetry, warn me--as you wish to save me from that which I should most dread, the reproaches of my own conscience--in the first, the very first instance, reprove me, mother, if you can--with severity. And you, my sister, my bosom friend, do not use your influence to soften, to open my mind to love; but if ever you perceive me yielding my heart to the first tenderness of the passion, watch over me, if the object be not every way worthy of me, my equal, my superior.--Oh! as you would wish to snatch me from the grave, rouse me from the delusion--save me from disappointment, regret, remorse, which I know that I could not bear, and live.” Her mother, into whose arms she threw herself, pressed Caroline close to her heart, while Rosamond, to whom she had given her hand, held it fast, and stood motionless between surprise and sympathy. Caroline, to whose usual manners and disposition every thing theatrical or romantic was so foreign, seemed, as soon as she recollected herself, to be ashamed of the excessive emotion and enthusiasm she had shown; withdrawing her hand from her sister, she turned away, and left the room. Her mother and sister both remained silent for a considerable time, fully occupied with their own thoughts and feelings. The mother’s reverie looked to the future prospects of her daughter;--confident in Caroline’s character, yet uncertain of her fate, she felt a pleasing yet painful solicitude. Rosamond’s thoughts turned rather to the past than to the future: she recollected and compared words and looks, yet found insuperable difficulty in connecting all she had ever before known or fancied of Caroline with what she had just seen and heard. Rosamond did not fairly recover from her surprise, and from her look of perplexity, during a full hour that she remained absolutely silent, poring upon a screen, upon which she saw nothing. She then went in search of Caroline, in hopes of renewing the conversation; but she found her busied in some of the common affairs of life, and apparently a different person.