"Do you really think so, mamma?" said Helen eagerly, but suddenly stopped herself, aware that in truth she had no grounds whatever for the strong feeling of dislike towards him of which she was conscious. She remembered, too, that her father had expressed himself greatly pleased by the urbanity of his manners, and that the last act of the benign influence he was wont to exercise on those around him had been to conquer the prejudice against him, to which the exclusion of the Wallace family had unjustly given rise. Helen remembered all this in a moment; the colour mounted to her cheeks, and she was silent. Rosalind, too, was silent, at least from words; but her eyes could speak as many volumes at a glance as Mr. Cartwright's, and she fixed them for an instant on Helen with a look that told her plainly her prejudices against their new neighbour, however unreasonable, were fully shared by her. Meanwhile Fanny had thrown her arms round her mother's neck in a sort of rapture at hearing her own opinions confirmed by such authority. "Oh, how true that is, dearest mamma!" she exclaimed; "how exactly I feel the same when he speaks to me!... Such goodness, such gentleness, so much superiority, yet so much humility! Poor dear Mr. Wallace was an excellent good man, certainly, but no more to be compared to Mr. Cartwright than I to Hercules!" "How many times have you seen Mr. Cartwright, Fanny?" said Rosalind. "I have heard him preach three times," she replied, "and they were all the most beautiful sermons in the world; and I have seen and spoken to him four times more." "Poor Mr. Wallace!" said Rosalind. "It was he who christened you, Fanny; and from that time to the hour of his death, you seldom passed many days together, I believe, without seeing and receiving affectionate words and kind looks from him: and yet four times speaking to this gentle gentleman has driven the memory of the poor old man from your heart!" "No, it has not, Rosalind," replied Fanny, deeply blushing: "I am sure I did not say that, did I, mamma?--But my loving and remembering Mr. Wallace all the days of my life need not make me dislike everybody else, I suppose?" "It would be a great misfortune to you if it did, Fanny," said Mrs. Mowbray. "I am delighted to see, both in you and many others, that the violent and most unjustifiable prejudice which was conceived against Mr. Cartwright before he was seen and known, is giving way before his amiable and excellent qualities: I have no doubt that he will soon be quite as popular in the parish as Mr. Wallace was." "And Miss Cartwright, mamma?" said Helen; "do you think we shall love her as well as we did Emma Wallace?"