everything--everything to make her happy. Instead of that, we were
brutes--all of us!"

"Belle!"--the tone was an indignant protest.

"But we were--listen! She lived in that house all her life till last
year. She never went anywhere or did anything. For twenty years she
lived with an old man who had lost his mind, and she tended him like a
baby--only a baby grows older all the time and more interesting, while
he--oh, Will, it was awful! That old lady--told me."

"By Jove!" exclaimed the young fellow, under his breath.

"And there were other things," hurried on the girl, tremulously. "Some
way, I never thought of Aunt Jane only as old and timid; but she was
young like us, once. She wanted to go away to school--but she couldn't
go; and there was some one who--loved her--once--later, and she sent
him--away. That was after--after grandfather lost his mind. Mother and
Uncle Edgar and Uncle Fred--they all went away and lived their own
lives, but she stayed on. Then last year grandfather died."

The girl paused and moistened her lips. The man did not speak. His eyes
were on the road ahead of the slow-moving car.

"I heard to-day--how--how proud and happy Aunt Jane was that Uncle Fred
had asked her to come and live with him," resumed the girl, after a
minute. "That old lady told me how Aunt Jane talked and talked about it
before she went away, and how she said that all her life she had taken
care of others, and it would be so good to feel that now some one was
going to look out for her, though, of course, she should do everything