debts to you, my dear aunt, are doubled now by your devotion to
Agnes. She will in great measure owe her life to you, I feel.'

'You exaggerate it,' said grandmamma, 'though I do believe I am a
comfort to her. But never mind about that just now--the present question
is Helena.'

'Yes,' he replied, 'I can't tell you how strongly I feel that it would
be for the child's good too, though I can quite understand it would be
difficult for you to see it in that light.'

'No,' said grandmamma, 'I have been thinking about it myself, for of
course I have not been feeling satisfied about her. Perhaps in the past
I have thought of her too exclusively, and it is very difficult for a
child not to be spoilt by this. And now on the other hand----'

'It is too much for you yourself,' interrupted my cousin, 'she should be
quite off your mind. I have the greatest confidence in Dr. Pierce's
judgment in such matters. He would recommend no school hastily. If you
will come into the library I will give you the addresses of the two he
mentioned. No doubt you will prefer to write for particulars yourself;
though when it is settled I daresay I could manage to take her there.
For even with these fresh hopes they have given us, now this crisis is
passed, I doubt your being able to leave Agnes for more than an hour or
two at a time.'

'I should not think of doing so,' said grandmamma, decidedly. 'Yes--if
you will give me the addresses I will write.'

To me her voice sounded cold and hard; _now_ I know of course that it
was only the force she was putting upon herself to crush down her own
feelings about parting with me.

It was not till they had left the room that I began to understand what a
dishonourable thing I had been doing in listening to this conversation,
and for a moment there came over me the impulse to rush after them and
tell what I had heard. But only for a moment; the dull heavy feeling,
which had been hanging over me for so long of not being cared for, of
having no place of my own and being in everybody's way, seemed suddenly
to have increased to an actual certainty. Hitherto, it now seemed to me,
I had only been playing with the idea, and now as a sort of punishment
had come upon me the reality of the cruel truth--grandmamma did _not_
care for me any longer. She had got back the nephew who had been like a
son to her, and he and his wife had stolen away from me all her love.
Then came the mortification of remembering that I was l