had taken the strangest idea into her head! She says you
are going to ask her to leave the cottage."

"The land on which her cottage stands is about to be sold," said Mrs.
de Tracy. "It is necessary that she should move."

"Yes, she quite understood that; but she thinks she is not going to
get another house; that was what was distressing her, naturally. Of
course she hates to leave the old place, but I believe if she gets
another nicer cottage, that will quite console her," said Robinette
quickly.

"I have no vacant cottage on the estate just now," said Mrs. de Tracy
quietly.

"Then what is she to do? Isn't it impossible that she should move
until another place is made ready for her?" Robinette rose and stood
beside the table, leaning the tips of her fingers on it in an attitude
of intense earnestness. She was trying to conceal the anger and dismay
she felt at her aunt's reply.

"Mrs. Prettyman has relatives at Exeter," said Mrs. de Tracy without
the quiver of an eyelid.

"Yes; but they are poor. They aren't very near relations, and they
don't want her. O Aunt de Tracy, is it necessary to make her leave?
She depends upon the plum tree so! She makes twenty-five dollars a
year from the jam!"

"Dollars have no significance for me," said Mrs. de Tracy with an icy
smile.

"Well, pounds then: five pounds she makes. How is she ever going to
live without that, unless you give her the equivalent? It's half her
livelihood! I promised you would consider it? Was I wrong?"

Old bitternesses rose in Mrs. de Tracy's heart, the prejudices and the
grudges of a lifetime. Everything connected with Robinette's mother
had been wrong in her eyes, and now everything connected with
Robinette was wrong too, and becoming more so with startling
rapidity.

"You had no right whatsoever to make any promises on my behalf," she
now said harshly. "You have acted foolishly and officiously. This is
no business of yours."

"I'll gladly make it my business if you'll let me, Aunt de Tracy!"
pleaded Robinette. "If you don't feel inclined to provide for Mrs.
Prettyman, mayn't I? She is my mother's old nurse and she shan't want
for anything as long as I have a penny to call my own!" Robinette's
eyes filled with tears, but Mrs. de Tracy was not a whit moved by this
show of emotion, which appeared to her unnecessary and theatrical.

"You are forgetting yourself a good deal in your way of speaking to me
on this subject," she said coldly. "When I