y be longing to repair the harm she did?"

"Can the leopard change his spots?" said Miss Lois, sternly. "But what
do you mean by leaving us all? What do you intend to do?"

"I intend to ask her either to use her influence in obtaining a
teacher's place for me immediately, or if I am not, in her opinion,
qualified, to give me the proper masters for one year. I would study
very hard; she would not be burdened with me long."

"And the proper masters are not here, of course?"

"No; at the East."

Miss Lois stopped in the middle of a round, took off her spectacles,
rolled up her knitting-work slowly and tightly as though it was never to
be unrolled again, and pinned it together with decision; she was pinning
in also a vast resolution. Then she looked at Anne in silence for
several minutes, saw the tear-dimmed eyes and tired, anxious face, the
appealing glance of William Douglas's child.

"I have not one word to say against it," she remarked at last, breaking
the silence; and then she walked out of the house and went homeward.

It was a hard battle for her. She was to be left with the four
brown-skinned children, for whom she had always felt unconquerable
aversion, while the one child whom she loved--Anne--was to go far away.
It was a revival of the bitter old feeling against Angelique Lafontaine,
the artful minx who had entrapped William Douglas to his ruin. In truth,
however, there had been very little art about Angelique; nor was Douglas
by any means a rich prey. But women always attribute wonderful powers of
strategy to a successful rival, even although by the same ratio they
reduce the bridegroom to a condition approaching idiocy; for anything is
better than the supposition that he was a free agent, and sought his
fate from the love of it.

The thought of Anne's going was dreadful to Miss Lois; yet her
long-headed New England thrift and calculation saw chances in that
future which Anne did not see. "The old wretch has money, and no near
heirs," she said to herself, "why should she not take a fancy to this
grandniece? Anne has no such idea, but her friends should, therefore,
have it for her." Still, the tears would rise and dim her spectacles as
she thought of the parting. She took off the gold-rimmed glasses and
rubbed them vigorously. "One thing is certain," she added, to herself,
as a sort of comfort, "Tita will have to do her mummeries in the garden
after this."

Poor old Lois! in these petty annoyances and