"Those who love you best, Caroline, are ever the first to behold and deplore your faults. Have you acted honourably? have you done worthily in exciting love merely to give pain, to amuse and gratify your own love of power?" "I have done no more than other girls do with impunity, without even notice; and surely that which is so generally practised cannot demand such severe censure as you bestow on it." "And therefore you would make custom an excuse for sin, Caroline. Would you have spoken thus a few months since? would you have questioned the justice of your mother's sentences? and yet you say you are not changed. Is it any excuse for a wrong action, because others do it? Had you been differently instructed it might be, but not when from your earliest years I have endeavoured to reason with, and to convince you of the sin of coquetry, to which from a child you have been inclined. You have acted more sinfully than many whose coquetry has been more general. You devoted yourself to one alone, encouraged, flattered, because you saw he was already attracted, instead of adhering to that distant behaviour which would have at once told him you could feel no more for him than as a friend. You would have prevented future suffering, by banishing from the first all secret hopes; but no, you wished to prove you could accomplish more than others, by captivating one so reserved and superior as St. Eval. Do not interrupt me by a denial, Caroline, for you dare not deliberately say such was not your motive. That noble integrity which I have so long believed your own, you have exiled from your heart. Your entire conduct towards St. Eval has been one continued falsehood, and are you then worthy to be united to one who is truth, honour, nobleness itself? Had you loved another, your rejection of this young man might have been excused, but not your behaviour towards him; for that not one good reason can be brought forward in excuse. I am speaking severely, Caroline, and perhaps my every word may alienate your confidence and affection still farther from me; but my duty shall be done, painful as it may be both to yourself and me. I cannot speak tamely on a subject in which the future character and welfare of my child are concerned. I can no longer trust in your integrity. Spite of your change in manner and in feeling towards me, I still confided in your unsullied honour; that I can no longer do, you have forfeited my confidence, Caroline, and not until I see a total change of conduct can you ever hope to regain it. That perhaps will not grieve you, as it would once have done; but unless you redeem your character," she continued "the serious displeasure of both your father and myself will be yours, and we shall, in all probability, find some means of withdrawing you from the society which has been so injurious to the purity of your character. Whatever others may do, it is your duty to act according to the principles of your