“Miss Grahame!” repeated Mrs. Hamilton, in an accent of surprise, before Caroline had time to make any answer; “Caroline, why have you not mentioned this engagement?  You do not generally make appointments without at least consulting me, if you no longer think it necessary to request my permission.  Where are you going with Annie?”

“To Oxford Street, I believe,” she answered carelessly, to conceal her rising indignation at this interference of her mother.

“If you require anything there, you can go with me by and bye.  Robert, give my compliments to Miss Grahame, and say from me, Miss Hamilton is particularly engaged with me at present, and therefore cannot keep her engagement to-day.  Return here as soon as you have delivered my message.”

“Mother!” burst from Caroline’s lips, in an accent of uncontrollable anger, as soon as the servant had left the room; but with a strong effort she checked herself, and hastily walked to the window.

An expression of extreme pain passed across her mother’s features as she looked towards her, but she took no notice till Robert had returned, and had been dismissed with her note to be given to Emmeline to transmit with hers.

“Caroline,” she then said, with dignity, yet perhaps less coldly than before, “if you will give me your attention for a short time, you will learn the cause of my displeasure, which is perhaps at present incomprehensible, unless, indeed, your own conscience has already reproached you; but before I commence on any other subject, I must request that you will make no more appointments with Miss Grahame without my permission.  This is not the first time you have done so; I have not noticed it previously, because I thought your own good sense would have told you that you were acting wrong, and contrary to those principles of candour I believed you to possess.”

“You were always prejudiced against Annie,” answered Caroline, with rising anger, for she had quite determined not to sit silent while her mother spoke, cost what it might.

“I am not speaking of Annie, Caroline, but to you.  The change in your conduct since you have become thus intimate with her, might indeed justify my prejudice, but on that I am not now dwelling.  I do not consider Miss Malison a fit chaperon for my daughter, and therefore I desire you will not again join her in her drives.”

“Every other girl of my station has the privilege of at least choosing her own companions without animadversion,” replied Caroline, indignantly, “and in the simple thing of making appointments without interference it is hard that I alone am to be an exception.”

“If you look around the circle in which I visit intimately, Caroline, you will find that did you act according to your own wishes, you would stand more alone than were you to regard mine.  I have done wrong in ever allowing you to be as intimate with Miss Grahame as you are.  You looked surprised and angry when I mentioned the change that had taken place in your conduct.”