resentful hatred. It was a terrible, unspeakable grief. She remembered
perfectly the helpless sense of loss and loneliness.

Her mother had loved her with passionate devotion. She was conscious
even then that Mabel and Ethel, the stepsisters, were as nothing in
comparison to herself in her mother's regard. She had a certainty that
her mother had loved her own father very much--the young, brilliant,
spendthrift, last La Sarthe. And her mother had been of the family,
too--a distant cousin. So she herself was La Sarthe to her finger
tips--slender and pale and distinguished-looking. She remembered the
last scene with her stepfather before her coming to La Sarthe Chase. It
was the culmination after a year of misery and unassuaged grieving for
her loss. He had come into the nursery where the three little girls were
playing--Halcyone and her two stepsisters--and he had made them all
stand up in his rough way, and see who could catch the pennies the best
that he threw from the door. His brother, "Uncle Ted," was with him. And
the two younger children, Mabel of five and Ethel of four, shouted
riotously with glee and snatched the coins from one another and greedily
quarreled over those which Halcyone caught with her superior skill and
handed to them.

She remembered her stepfather's face--it grew heavy and sullen and he
walked to the window, where his brother followed him--and she remembered
their words and had pondered over them often since.

"It's the damned breeding in the brat that fairly gets me raw, Ted," Mr.
Anderton had said. "Why the devil couldn't Elaine have given it to my
children, too. I can't stand it--a home must be found for her
elsewhere."