fetched her down to the dining-room where there was a fire, and tried
to reason with her, or scolded her for her persistent grief when
reasoning produced no effect.

"You must begin your lessons again, Beth," she said to her at last one
morning in despair. "Giving you a holiday is doing you no good at
all."

Beth went upstairs without a word, and brought down the old aunt's
French books, and sat at the dining-table with one of them open before
her; but the sight of it recalled the happy summer days in the bright
little parlour looking out on the trees and flowers, and the dear old
lady with her delicate face sitting at the end of the table placidly
knitting while Beth prepared her lesson, and the tears welled up in
her eyes once more, and fell on the yellow pages.

"Beth," said her mother emphatically, "you must not go on like this.
Why are you so selfish? Don't _I_ feel it too? Yet I control myself."

"You don't feel it as I do," Beth answered doggedly. "She was not so
much to you when she was here, how can you miss her so much now she
has gone?"

"But you have others to love," Mrs. Caldwell remonstrated. "She was
not your nearest relation."

"No, but she was the dearest," Beth replied. "I may have others to
love, but she was the one who loved me. She never said I had no
affection for any one; she never said I was selfish and thought of
nothing but my own interests. If she had to find fault with me, she
did it so that she made me want to be better. She was never unkind,
she was never unjust, and now I've lost her, I have no one."

"It is your own fault then," said Mrs. Caldwell, apt as usual to say
the kind of thing with which fatuous parents torment the genius-child.
"You are so determined not to be like other people that nobody can
stand you."

"I am not determined to be unlike other people," Beth exclaimed,
turning crimson with rage and pain. "I want to be like everybody else,
and I _am_ like everybody else. And I am always ready to care for
people too, if they will let me. It isn't my fault if they don't like
me."

"It _is_ your fault," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You have an unhappy
knack of separating yourself from every one. Look at your Uncle James.
He can hardly tolerate you."

"He's a fool, so that doesn't matter," said Beth, who always dealt
summarily with Uncle James. "I can't tolerate him. But you can't say I
separate myself from Aunt Grace Mary. She likes me, and she's kind;
but she's silly, a