Then, with no illness to prepare her for so awful a blow, with nothing but a stopping of the heart-beats, Carolina’s father fell into his last, long sleep, and before she could fairly realize her loss, her mother followed him. Within six weeks, the girl found herself orphaned and mistress of the great Lee fortune, but utterly alone in the world, for her grandfather had died the year previous and Sherman had just married and gone back to America. That Carolina felt her mother’s loss no one could doubt, but the change in the young girl wrought by her father’s death was something awful to behold. She had not dreamed that he could die. He was so young, so strong, so noble, so upright, such an honour to his country and to his race! Why should perfection cease to exist and the ignorant, wicked, and common live on? Carolina resisted the thought with tigerish fierceness, and openly blasphemed the God who created her. "God my father?" she stormed at Cousin Lois, who listened with blanched face and trembling fear of further vengeance on the part of outraged Deity. "Why, would my own precious father send me a moment of such suffering as I have passed through ever since they took him away from me? He would have given his life to save me from one heart-pang, and you ask me to believe that God is a father, when He sends such awful anguish into this world?" "He sends it for your good, Carolina, dear," pleaded Cousin Lois. "Oh, He does, does He? He thinks it will do me good to suffer? _Daddy_ thought so, didn’t he? Daddy _liked_ to make me unhappy, didn’t he? He didn’t realize how blissful heavenly love could be, so he only loved me in a poor, blind, earthly fashion, which made every day a joy and every hour we spent together a song! Poor daddy! To be so ignorant of the real way to love his children!" "Oh, Carolina!" moaned Mrs. Winchester. "God hates me, Cousin Lois," said the girl, dropping her impassioned manner and speaking with bitter calmness. "I have been recognizing it for some time. I have felt that He was jealous of my happiness. You know it says: ’For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.’ He admits it Himself. So He took vengeance on me through His power and killed my parents just to show me that He could! But if He thinks that I am going to kneel down and thank Him for murder, and love Him for ruining my life--" A steel blue light seemed to blaze from the girl’s eyes as she thus raised her tiny hand and shook it at her Creator. Cousin Lois burst into tears. Carolina viewed her without sympathy. "I am so little," she said, suddenly. "It is a brave thing for God to pit His great strength against mine, isn’t it? Listen to me, Cousin Lois, I am done with religion from now on. I will never say another prayer as long as I live. The worst has happened to me which could happen. Nothing more counts." It was while she was in this terrible state of mind that Mrs. Winchester took charge of her.