before her. She had
something more to say. "If ever I am able," she said--"and I shall
be able some day if I have my health--I will repay you." Ellen
spoke with the greatest sweetness, yet with an inflexibility of
pride evident in her face. Cynthia smiled. "Very well," she said,
"if you feel better to leave it in that way. If ever you are able
you shall repay me; in the mean time I consider that I am amply paid
in the pleasure it gives me to do it." Cynthia held out her slender
hand to Ellen, who took it gratefully, yet a little constrainedly.

In the opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of
blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over
Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude--a sense of injury
which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself.
However, Andrew felt it also.

After this surprising benefactress and Robert had gone, after
repeated courtesies and assurances of obligation on both sides,
Andrew turned to Fanny. "What does she do it for?" he asked.

"Hush; she'll hear you."

"I can't help it. What does she do it for? Ellen isn't anything to
her."

Fanny looked at him with a meaning smile and nod which made her
tear-stained face fairly grotesque.

"What do you mean lookin' that way?" demanded Andrew.

"Oh, you wait and see," said Fanny, with meaning, and would say no
more. She was firm in her conclusion that Cynthia was educating
their girl to marry her favorite nephew, but that never occurred to
Andrew. He continued to feel, while supremely grateful and
overwhelmed with delight at this good fortune for Ellen, the
distrust and resentment of a proud soul under obligation for which
he sees no adequate reason, and especially when it is directed
towards a beloved one to whom he would fain give of his own strength
and treasure.

As for Ellen, she was in a tumult of wonder and delight, but when
she looked at the doll in her corner there came again that vague
sense of injury, and she felt again as if in some way she were being
robbed instead of being made the object of benefit.

After Ellen had gone to bed that night she wondered if she ought to
go to college, and maybe gain thereby a career which was beyond
anything her own loved ones had known, and if it were not better for
her to go to work in the shop after all.

Chapter XXII

When Mrs. Zelotes was made acquainted with the plan for sending
Ellen to Vassar she astonished Fanny. Fann