uld not listen, and he
was punished for his obstinacy. You were no comfort to him, for, as I
pointed out many a time, you were bound to grow up the living image of
the woman who had betrayed us. I told him if he lived he'd have it all
to go over again in you--maybe worse, if that could be possible, for the
sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even to the third and
fourth----"

"But I thought it was my mother I was like," Barrie flung at her.

"Figuratively speaking, it is the same thing, as you well understand,
unless you are a fool. Your father was not strong enough to bear the
burden which his own mistakes had bound on his shoulders. He left the
responsibility of bringing up that woman's daughter to me, and under
Heaven I have done my best. I have kept you away from vanities, hoping
that in spite of all you might remain unspotted from the world. But
blood will tell. To-day I find that, as your mother before you stole
like a thief out of the house, so you have stolen into this place, which
was forbidden you, to gratify your curiosity and your vanity. I find you
as bold as brass parading in that low-necked red dress, which I told
your mother was a shame to any woman when I saw her flaunting in it. Now
you know what she was, and what you are and are like to be. I tell you
again, take off that gown as you would tear off a poisoned toad from
your flesh; then go down to your own room and spend the rest of the day
in prayer and meditation."

It was a triumph for Grandma that Barrie did not throw at her an
insolent answer. For a moment the girl did not reply at all. Then she
said, in a singularly quiet way, that she would take off the dress and
put it back in the trunk, but not unless her grandmother would leave her
alone to do it. Afterward, she would ask nothing better than to go to
her own room and stay there. "I _want_ to think," she added; "I have a
lot to think about. But I shall think only good things of my mother.
What you have told me has made me very, very happy. I believed that my
mother was dead. Now I know she's in the same world with me, I could
almost die of joy."

"It is like her daughter to feel that," Mrs. MacDonald returned
bitterly. "If you are not downstairs in ten minutes, I will have the
door locked and keep you in the garret without food or drink or light
for twenty-four hours."

"I should _love_ that!" exclaimed Barrie suddenly, in the manner of her
old self. Nevertheless, she desce