After the hesitation of a moment, she closed the door, and walking up to the side of Fanny, stood beside her for the minute and a half which it took Mr. Cartwright to bring his harangue to a conclusion. He then ceased, rose from his knees, and bowed to the intruder with an air so meek and sanctified, but yet with such a downcast avoidance of her eye withal, that Rosalind shrank from him with ill-concealed dislike, and would instantly have left the room, but that she did not choose again to leave Fanny, who still continued kneeling beside her, to a repetition of the scene she had interrupted. "Fanny!" she said, in an accent a little approaching to impatience. But Fanny heeded her not. Vexed and disgusted at this display of a devotion so unlike the genuine, unaffected, well-regulated piety in which she had been herself brought up, she repeated her call,--adding, as she laid her hand lightly on her shoulder, "This is not the sort of worship which your excellent father, or good Mr. Wallace either, would have approved." Fanny now rose from her knees, and the cause of her not doing so before became evident. Her face was as pale as ashes, and traces of violent weeping were visible on her swollen eyelids. "Good Heaven, Fanny! what can have affected you thus?--What, sir, have you been saying to produce so terrible an effect on Miss Mowbray? The prayers of the church, in the discipline of which she has been most carefully bred up, produce no such paroxysms as these, Mr. Cartwright.--Come with me, Fanny, and do endeavour to conquer this extraordinary vehemence of emotion." Fanny took her arm; but she trembled so violently that she could scarcely stand. "Mr. Cartwright," said Rosalind with a burst of indignation that she could not control, "I must beg of you not to repeat this species of experiment on the feelings of this young lady during the absence of her mother. At her return she will of course decide upon your continuance, or discontinuance, in the office you have been pleased to assume; but, till then, I must beg, in her name, that we may have no more of this." "Oh! Rosalind!" exclaimed Fanny, while a fresh shower of tears burst from her eyes, "how can you speak so!" "Tell me, my dear young lady," said Mr. Cartwright, addressing Miss Torrington in a voice of the gentlest kindness, "did good Mrs. Mowbray, on leaving home, place Miss Fanny under your care?" "No, sir, she did not," replied Rosalind, a crimson flush of anger and indignation mounting to her cheeks; "but, being considerably older than Fanny, I deem it my duty to prevent her if possible from again becoming an actor in such a scene as this." Fanny withdrew her arm, and clasping her hands together, again exclaimed, "Oh! Rosalind!"