It was terrible to see how keenly Aunt Anne suffered; how fully alive she was to the sad side of her own position. Poor old lady, it was impossible to help feeling very much for her, Florence thought. “And had he no relations at all who could help you, dear?” she asked, wondering that none should have held out a helping hand. “No, not one. I married for love, as you did; that is one reason why I knew that you would feel for me.” There was a world of sadness in her voice as she said the last words; her face seemed to grow thinner and paler as she related her troubles. She looked far older, too, than she had done on the Brighton day. The little lines about her face had become wrinkles; her hair was scantier and greyer; her eyes deeper set in her head; her hands were the thin dry hands of old age. Florence ached for her, and pondered things over for a moment. Walter was not rich, and he was not strong just now; the hint of yesterday had sunk deep in her heart. Still, he and she must try and make this poor soul’s few remaining years comfortable, if no one else could be found on whom she had a claim. She did not think she could ask Aunt Anne to come and live with them; she remembered an aunt who had lived in her girlhood’s home, who had not been a success. But they might for all that do something; the old lady could not be left to the wide world’s tender mercies. Florence knew but little of her husband’s relations, except that he had no near or intimate ones left, but there might be some outlying cousins sufficiently near to Aunt Anne to make their helping her a moral obligation. “Have you no friends—no relations at all, dear Aunt Anne?” she asked. With a long sigh Mrs. Baines answered: “Florence”—she gave a gulp before she went on, as if to show that what she had to tell was almost too sad to be put into words,—“Sir William Rammage is my own cousin, he has thousands and thousands a year, and he refuses to allow me anything. I went to him when I first came to London and begged him to give me a small income so that I might not be obliged to go out into the world; but he said that he had so many claims upon him that it was impossible. Yet he and I were babes together; we lay in the same cradle once, while our mothers stood over us, hand in hand. But though we had not met since we were six years old till I went to him in my distress a few months ago, he refused to do anything for me.” “Have you been in London long then, Aunt Anne?” “I have been here five months, Florence. I took a lodging on the little means I had left, and then—and then I had to struggle as best I could.” “You should have come to us before, poor dear.” “I should have done so, my love, but—my lodging was too simple, and I was not in a position to receive you as I could have wished. I waited, hoping that Sir William would see that it was incumbent on him to make me an adequate allowance; but he has not done so.”