would be upward, and moreover administered by herself, she could look
at her aunt with a cold and inscrutable eye.

"Very well, then, I shall be out of your sight, from the pinnacle you
occupy, and I sha'n't trouble you."

"Do you reproach me for my disinterested exertions, for the way I've
toiled over you, the way I've lived for you?" Miss Tramore demanded.

"Don't reproach ME for being kind to my mother and I won't reproach
you for anything."

"She'll keep you out of everything--she'll make you miss everything,"
Miss Tramore continued.

"Then she'll make me miss a great deal that's odious," said the girl.

"You're too young for such extravagances," her aunt declared.

"And yet Edith, who is younger than I, seems to be too old for them:
how do you arrange that? My mother's society will make me older,"
Rose replied.

"Don't speak to me of your mother; you HAVE no mother."

"Then if I'm an orphan I must settle things for myself."

"Do you justify her, do you approve of her?" cried Miss Tramore, who
was inferior to her niece in capacity for retort and whose
limitations made the girl appear pert.