partly toward Helen,
who nodded affirmatively while Katy continued: "Had he taken a knife and
cut a cruel gash it would not have hurt me half so badly. I could bear
that, but my baby--oh, Helen, do you think they will take her away?"

She was looking straight at Helen, who shivered as she met an expression
so unlike Katy, and so like to that a hunted deer might wear if its
offspring were in danger.

"Say, do you think they will?" she continued, shedding back with her
thin hand the mass of tangled curls which had fallen about her eyes.

"Whom do you mean by 'they'?" Helen asked, coming near to her, and
sitting down upon the bed.

There was a resentful gleam in the blue eyes usually so gentle, as Katy
answered:

"Whom do I mean? His folks of course! They have been the instigators of
every sorrow I have known since I left Silverton. Oh, Helen, never,
never marry anybody who has folks, if you wish to be happy."

Helen could not repress a smile, though she pitied her sister, who
continued:

"I don't mean Father Cameron, nor Bell, nor Jamie, for I love them all,
and I believe that they love me. Father does, I know, and Jamie, while
Bell has helped me so often; but Mrs. Cameron and Juno--oh, Helen, you
will never know what they have been to me."

"I notice you always say 'father' and 'Mrs. Cameron.' Why is that?"
Helen asked, hoping thus to divert Katy's mind from her present trouble,
and feeling a little anxious to hear Katy's real sentiments with regard
to her husband's family.

Since Helen came to New York there has been so much to talk about
that, though Katy had told her of her fashionable life, she had said
comparatively little of the Camerons. Now, however, there was no holding
back on Katy's part, and beginning with the first night of her arrival
in New York she told what is already known to the reader, and more,
exonerating Wilford in word, but dealing out full justice to his mother
and Juno, the former of whom controlled him so completely.

"I tried so hard to love her," Katy said, "and if she had given me ever
so little in return I would have been satisfied, but she never did--that
is, when I hungered for it most, missing you at home, and the loving
care which sheltered me in childhood. After the world took me into favor
she too began to caress me, but I was wicked enough to think it all came
of selfishness. I know I am hard and bad, for when I was sick Mrs.
Cameron was really very kind, and I began to