course everything _I_ do is wrong. Of course _you_ could do
everything so very much better. That's what children are nowadays."

Whilst Mrs. Cross piped on, Bertha regarded her with eyes of
humorous sadness. The girl often felt it a dreary thing not to be
able to respect--nay, not to be able to feel much love for--her
mother. At such times, her thought turned to the other parent, with
whom, had he and she been left alone, she could have lived so
happily, in so much mutual intelligence and affection. She sighed
and moved away.

The unlet house was a very serious matter, and when one day Norbert
Franks came to talk about it, saying that he would want a house very
soon, and thought this of Mrs. Cross's might suit him, Bertha
rejoiced no less than her mother. In consequence of the artist's
announcement, she wrote to her friend Rosamund, saying how glad she
was to hear that her marriage approached. The reply to this letter
surprised her. Rosamund had been remiss in correspondence for the
last few months; her few and brief letters, though they were as
affectionate as ever, making no mention of what had formerly been an
inexhaustible topic--the genius, goodness, and brilliant hopes of
Franks. Now she wrote as if in utter despondency, a letter so
confused in style and vague in expression, that Bertha could gather
from it little or nothing except a grave doubt whether Franks'
marriage was as near as he supposed. A week or two passed, and
Rosamund again wrote--from Switzerland; again the letter was an
unintelligible maze of dreary words, and a mere moaning and sighing,
which puzzled Bertha as much as it distressed her. Rosamund's
epistolary style, when she wrote to this bosom friend, was always
pitched in a key of lyrical emotion, which now and then would have