with the arrival of a younger and
more energetic person she was voluntarily relinquishing her hold on her
customary tasks, or whether a sudden collapse of her vitality forced her
to do so, Lucy could not determine; nevertheless, it was perfectly
apparent that she daily attacked her duties more laggingly and complained
less loudly when things were left undone.

When, however, Lucy tried to supplement her diminishing strength by offers
of aid, Ellen was quick to resent the imputation that she was any less
robust than she had been in the past, and in consequence the girl
confronted the delicate problem of trying to help without appearing to do
so.

Parallel with this lessening of physical zeal ran an exaggerated nervous
irritability very hard to bear. Beneath the lash of her aunt's cruel
tongue Lucy often writhed, quivered, and sometimes wept; but she struggled
to keep her hold on her patience. Ellen was old, she told herself, and the
self-centered life she had led had embittered her. Moreover, she was
approaching the termination of her days, and to a nature like hers the
realization that there was no escape from her final surrender to Death
filled her with impotent rage. She had always conquered; but now something
loomed in her path which it was futile and childish to seek to defy.

Therefore, difficult as was Lucy's present existence, she put behind her
all temptation to desert this solitary woman and leave her to die alone.
Was not Ellen her father's sister, and would he not wish his daughter to
be loyal to the trust it had fallen to her to fulfill? Was she not, as a
Webster, in honor bound to do so?

In the meantime, as if to intensify this sense of family obligation, Lucy
discovered that she was acquiring a growing affection for the home which
for generations had been the property of her ancestors. The substantial
mansion, with its colonial doorways surmounted by spreading fans of glass,
its multi-paned windows and its great square chimney, must once have
breathed the very essence of hospitality, and it did so still, even though
closed blinds and barred entrances combined to repress its original
spirit. Already the giant elm before the door had for her a significance
quite different from that of any other tree; so, too, had the valley with
its shifting lights. She loved the music of the brook, the rock-pierced
pasture land, the minarets of the spruces that crowned the hills. The
faintly definable mountains, blue a