my
fault that Kitty Barry has trouble; _I_ had nothing to do with it! Look
at people like Leslie--what she wastes on one new fur coat would keep
the Barrys for a year! Eighty-two hundred dollars she paid for her
birthday coat! And that's _nothing_! Katrina Thayer----"

"Norma--Norma--Norma!" her aunt interrupted, reproachfully. "What have
you to do with girls like the Thayer girl? Why, there aren't twenty
girls in the country as rich as that. That doesn't affect _you_, if
there's something you can do for the poor and unfortunate----"

"It _does_ affect me! I can't"--Norma dropped her tone, and glanced at
her aunt. She knew that she was misbehaving--"I can't help inheriting a
love for money," she said, breathing hard. "I know perfectly well who I
am--who my mother is," she ended, with a half-defiant and half-fearful
sob in her voice.

"How do you mean that you know about your mother, Norma?" Mrs. Sheridan
demanded, sharply.

"Well"--Norma had calmed a little, and she was a trifle nervous--"Chris
told me; and Aunt Alice knows, too--that Aunt Annie is my mother," she
said.

"Chris Liggett told you that?" Mrs. Sheridan asked, with a note of
incredulity in her voice.

"Yes. Aunt Alice guessed it almost as soon as I went to live there! And
I've known it for over a year," Norma said.

"And who told Chris?"

"Well--Aunt Marianna, I suppose!"

There was silence for a moment.

"Norma," said Mrs. Sheridan, in a quiet, convincing tone that cooled the
girl's hot blood instantly, "Chris is entirely wrong; your mother is
dead. I've never lied to you, and I give you my word! I don't know where
Miss Alice got that idea, but it's like her romantic way of fancying
things! No, dear," she went on, sympathetically, as Norma sat silent,
half-stunned by painful surprise, "you have no claim on Miss Annie. Both
your father and mother are dead, Norma; I knew them both. There was a
reason," Mrs. Sheridan added, thoughtfully, "why I felt that Mrs.
Melrose might want to be kind to you--want to undo an injustice she did
years ago. But I've told myself a thousand times that I did you a cruel
wrong when I first let you go among them--you who were always so
sensible, and so cheerful, and who would always take things as they
came, and make no fuss!"

"Oh, Aunt Kate," Norma stammered, bitterly, her lip trembling, and her
voice fighting tears, "you don't have to tell me that in your opinion
I've changed for the worse--I see it in the way yo