tand it altogether.

'Your grandmamma will put it all right to you, herself, when she sees
well to do so,' she said. 'She has just made one mistake, Miss Helena,
it seems to me--she has credited you with more sense than perhaps should
be expected of a child.'

I didn't like this, and I felt my cheeks grow red.

'More sense,' repeated Kezia, 'and she has trusted you too much. It
should have pleased you to be looked on like that, and if you'd been a
little older it would have done so. The idea that you could think she
had left off caring for you would have seemed to her simply impossible.
She has trusted you too much, and you, Miss Helena, have not trusted her
at all.'

'But you're forgetting, Kezia, what I heard myself, with my own ears,
about sending me away to school, and how little she seemed to care.'

Kezia smiled, rather sadly.

'My dearie,' she said, 'I have not served Mrs. Wingfield all the years I
have, not to know her better than that. I daresay you'll never know,
unless you live to be a mother and grandmother yourself, what the
thought of parting with you was costing her, at the very time she spoke
so quietly.'

'But when I fell downstairs,' I persisted, 'she seemed so vexed with me,
and then--oh! for days and days before that, I had hardly seen her.'

Kezia looked pained.

'Yes, my dear, it must have been hard for you, but harder for your
grandmamma. There are times in life when all does seem to be going the
wrong way. And very likely being so very troubled and anxious herself,
about you as well as about other things, made your grandmamma appear
less kind than usual.'

Kezia stopped and hesitated a little.

'I think as things are,' she said, 'I can't be doing wrong in telling
you a little more than you know. I am sure my dear lady will forgive me
if I make a mistake in doing so, seeing she has not told you more
herself, no doubt for the best of reasons.'

She stopped again. I felt rather frightened.

'What do you mean, Kezia?' I said.

'It is about Mrs. Vandeleur. Do you know, my dear Miss Helena, that it
has just been touch and go these last days, if she was to live or die?'

'Oh, Kezia!' I exclaimed; 'no, I didn't know it was as bad as that,' and
the tears--unselfish, unbitter tears this time--rushed into my eyes as I
remembered the sweet white face that I had seen in grandmamma's room,
and the gentle voice that had tried to say something kind and loving to
me. 'Oh, Kezia, I wish I had kn