hardly taken any food since her breakfast at Kyve three days ago; and
finding poor old nurse too entirely broken down to be of any use, he
put his own kind wife in charge of her, and was unwilling to admit
anyone else—-even Mrs. Robert Brownlow, who arrived in the course of
the day. She was a tall, fine-looking person, with an oval face-—
soft, pleasant brown skin, mild brown eyes, and much tenderness of
heart and manner, but not very well known to Caroline; for her
periodical visits had been wholly devoted to shopping and sight-
seeing. She was exceedingly shocked at the tidings that met her, and
gathered Janet into her arms with many tears over the poor orphan
girl! It was an effusiveness that overwhelmed Janet, who had a
miserable, hard, dried-up feeling of wretchedness, and injury too;
for the more other people cried, the less she could cry, and she
heard them saying to one another that she was unfeeling.

Still Aunt Ellen's presence was a sort of relief, for it made the
house less empty and dreary, and she took upon her the cares that
were greatly needed in the bereaved household, where old nurse had
lost her head, and could do nothing, and the most effective maid was
away with the children. So Janet wandered about after her aunt, with
an adverse feeling at having her home meddled with, but answering
questions and giving opinions, called or uncalled for. Her longing
was for her brothers, and it was a great blow to find that her uncle
had written to both Allen and Mr. Acton that they had better not come
home at present. She thought it cruel and unjust both towards them
and herself; and in her sickening sense of solitude and injury she
had a vague expectation that they were all going to be left wholly
orphans, like the children of fiction, dependent on their uncle and
aunt, who would be unjust, and prefer their own children; and she had
a prevision of the battles she was to fight, and the defensive