e thankful for _me_. What could it be? What had he written to say?

I am afraid that Sharley's letter scarcely had justice done to it the
second time I read it through--between every line would come up the
thought of what grandmamma had said, and the wondering what she could
mean. And besides that, the uncomfortable feeling that I was not as good
as she thought me--that I did not deserve all the love and anxiety she
lavished on me.

CHAPTER IX

A GREAT CHANGE

Perhaps here it will be best for me to tell straight off what the
contents of Mr. Vandeleur's letter were. Not, I mean, to go into all as
to when and how grandmamma told me about it, with 'she said's' and 'I
said's.' Besides, it would not be quite correct to tell it that way, for
as a matter of fact I did not understand everything _then_ as I do now
that I am several years older, and it would be difficult not to mix up
what I have since come to know with the ideas I then had--ideas which
were in some ways mistaken and childish.

First of all, how do you think Cousin Cosmo, as I was told to call him,
had come to write again after all those years of silence? What had put
it into his head?

The explanation is rather curious. It all came from Gerard Nestor's
being at Moor Court that Easter, and feeling so sorry for grandmamma
and so sure that she was in trouble.

I have told, as we knew afterwards, that he had written to his people,
but that grandmamma's way of answering made them think, and hope, that
he had fancied more than was really the matter, and besides it was
difficult for the Nestors, who were not _relations_, to do anything to
help grandmamma, unless she had in some way given them her confidence.
At that time they were hoping to come home the following spring, and
then, probably, Mrs. Nestor would have found out more.

But when Gerard first went back to school his head was full of it. He
had not been _told_ anything, it was only his own suspicions, so there
was no harm in his speaking of it, as he did, though quite privately, to
his great friend, Harry Vandeleur.

And Harry gave him some confidences in return. Lady Bridget Woodstone,
the old lady who was guardian to him and his brother, had lately
died--the boys had spent their last holidays at school, but a new
guardian had now appeared on the scene. This was a cousin of theirs
whom, till then, they had never heard of, and this cousin was no other
than grandmamma's nephew, Mr. Cosmo Vand