"To touch, to influence, to lead, to rule, to tyrannise over the hearts and souls of all he approaches, is the great object of his life. He would willingly do this in the hearts of men,--but for the most part he has found them tough; and he now, I think, seems to rest all his hopes of fame, wealth, and station on the power he can obtain over women.--I say not," she added after a pause, while a slight blush passed over her pallid cheek, "that I believe his senses uninfluenced by beauty;--this is far, hatefully far from being the case with Mr. Cartwright;--but he is careful, most cunningly careful, whatever victims he makes, never to become one in his own person. "You would find, were you to watch him, that his system, both for pleasure and profit, consists of a certain graduated love-making to every woman within his reach, not too poor, too old, or too ugly. But if any among them fancy that he would sacrifice the thousandth part of a hair's breadth of his worldly hopes for all they could give him in return--they are mistaken." "The character you paint," said Rosalind, who grew pale as she listened, "is too terrible for me fully to understand, and I would turn my eyes from the portrait, and endeavour to forget that I had ever heard of it, were not those I love endangered by it. Hateful as all this new knowledge is to me, I must still question you further, Miss Cartwright: What do you suppose to be his object in thus working upon the mind of Fanny Mowbray?" "His motives, depend upon it, are manifold. Religion and love, the new birth and intellectual attachment--mystical sympathy of hearts, and the certainty of eternal perdition to all that he does not take under the shadow of his wing;--these are the tools with which he works. He has got his foot--perhaps you may think it a cloven one, but, such as it is, he seems to have got it pretty firmly planted within the paling of Mowbray Park. He made me follow him hither as a volunteer visiter, very much against my inclination; but if by what I have said you may be enabled to defeat any of his various projects among ye,--for he never plots single-handed,--I shall cease to regret that I came." "My power of doing any good," replied Rosalind, "must, I fear, be altogether destroyed by my ignorance of what Mr. Cartwright's intentions and expectations are. You have hinted various things, but all so vaguely, that I own I do not feel more capable of keeping my friends from any danger which may threaten them, than before this conversation took place." "I am sorry for it," said Henrietta coldly, "but I have really no information more accurate to give." "I truly believe that you have meant very kindly," said Rosalind, looking seriously distressed. "Will you go one step farther, and say what you would advise me to do, Miss Cartwright?"