ou have already
been told about your father. I have promised that you shall go into your
mother's room and take possession of it on your fifteenth birthday. That
is enough. I am grieved that you should have listened to vulgar gossip
about our affairs; but I may tell you that your mother left money to
provide for you ten times over, if need be."

"Then you are unkind and cruel not to use it to send me to school and
let me have what other girls have," cried Marjory passionately.

"Marjory," said her uncle quietly, "I cannot listen to you while you are
in this mood. You had better go, and come back again when you can talk
more reasonably."

"Yes, I will go, and I wish I need never come back. I hate everything,
and I wish I were dead."

With these words she flung out of the room, rushed blindly through the
house into the garden and on into the wood, where she threw herself down
under a tree, and sobbed out her grief to the faithful Silky until Mrs.
Forester found her.

Dr. Hunter was very much troubled and puzzled by his niece's behaviour.
Never before had she given way to such an outburst. He had not believed
her capable of such a storm of passion, and felt himself quite at a
loss. He was grieved and shocked beyond measure by Marjory's words.
"Unkind, cruel," he muttered to himself. "Surely not. I love the little
thing as though she were my own." And while Marjory was weeping bitterly
under the tree in the wood, her uncle, very sorrowful and thoughtful,
was pacing up and down his study wondering what he could do for the
best. It seemed all the more grievous as, only that afternoon, he had
been making plans for Marjory with Mrs. Forester--that she should share
Blanche's lessons and enjoy her companionship.

Mrs. Forester had heard much of the doctor and his niece from the mutual
friend in London who had written to the doctor, and she knew exactly how
to manage things, so that in the course of one short hour plans were
made which were to alter Marjory's whole existence.

But she, poor child, knew nothing of this, and her grief was bitter--the
more so as she slowly realized that she had been wrong to give way to
her passion. First, she had called Mary Ann Smylie a beast. Well, she
had been very much shocked once to hear a child in the street use that
word to another, but she herself had used it quite easily, and still
felt as if she would like to use it again; but, worst of all, she had
called her uncle unkind and cru