That last year of remorseful memories softened her, and she accepted the charge that Lancelot Davis left her. He lived just long enough in his bleak hospital on a Gloucestershire hill-top to read his mother-in-law's letter: "Send the little girl to me. I will be kinder to her than I was to her mother." Society, and especially Cara's other relations, said that poor Felicia had been quite admirable in taking the sole charge of the orphan. There was no attempt to foist the little girl upon aunts and cousins; and, considering poor Felicia's state of genteel pauperism, always in lodgings, her behaviour was worthy of all praise. The grandchild brought back the memory of the daughter's childhood, and Lady Felicia almost felt as if she was again a young widow, full of care for her only child. So far as her narrow means permitted she made the little girl happy, and she found her own dreary existence brightened by that young life. That calm and monotonous existence with Grannie was not the kind of life that childhood yearns for, and there were long stretches of time in which little Veronica had only her picture-books and fancy needlework to amuse her--after the cheap morning governess had departed, and the day's tasks were done. At least Grannie did not torture the orphan with over-education. A little French, a little easy music, a little English history, occupied the morning hours, and then Vera was free to read what books she liked to choose out of Grannie's blameless and meagre library. Lady Felicia's nomadic life had not allowed the accumulation of literature, but the few books she carried about with her were of the best, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Byron. Her trunks had room only for the Immortals, and as soon as Vera could read them, and long before she could understand them, those dear books were familiar to her. The pictures helped her to understand, and she was never tired of looking at them. Sometimes Grannie would read Shakespeare to her, the ghostly scenes in _Hamlet_, which thrilled her, or passages and scenes from the _Tempest_, or _Midsummer Night's Dream_, which Vera thought divine. She had no playfellows, and hardly knew how to play; but in her lonely life imagination filled the space that the frolics and gambols of exuberant spirits occupy in the life of the normal child. Those few great novels which she read over and over again peopled her world, a world of beautiful images that she had all to herself, and of which her fancy never wearied--Amy Robsart and Leicester, the Scottish Knight, the generous Saracen, the heroic dog, Paul Dombey and his devoted sister, David Copperfield and his child-wife. These were the companions of the long silent afternoons, when Grannie was taking her siesta in seclusion upstairs, and when Vera had the drawing-room to herself. No visitors intruded on those long afternoons; for Lady Felicia's card gave the world to know that the first and fifteenth of May, June, and July, were the only days on