Cousin Deborah, for her part, would have preferred to do without Anne. She foresaw that Lucy would have formed undesirable and wrong habits under such a rule as that of Aunt Bernard, and she thought it would be more easy to break up these habits if the little girl had no one about her but such persons as she knew and could trust. But Anne's services had been too important to go unrewarded: she had lost her place from her devotion to Lady Lucy's interests, and she was devotedly attached to the child: so Cousin Deborah resolved to make the best of it. It may easily be guessed that Anne was not at all unwilling to accompany Lady Lucy, or to exchange the close housekeeping of the Grange for the liberality of Stanton Court. Margery might have come, too, and both Lady Lucy and Anne begged her to do so; but Margery refused. "I am not going to leave my old mistress, now that she is in trouble and disgrace," said she. "I shall stay and stand by her. She will find it hard to suit herself, with all these stories flying about the country. She is growing infirm in body and, I believe, in mind; and I will not leave her with no one about her whom she can trust but Hannah." The stories to which Margery referred were exaggerated and distorted accounts of her mistress's treatment of Lady Lucy. The maids at the parsonage had gossiped, of course, as well as the milkmaid at the Grange. Every one in the village knew that Lady Lucy's father had found his daughter locked in an upper room alone, with nothing to eat but a crust of brown bread,—some said, not even that,—and had taken her away without seeing his sister or waiting for his child's clothes to be packed up. This was a fine nucleus for the story, which grew, like a snowball, every time it was turned over, till many people actually believed that Mrs. Bernard had gone deliberately to work to kill her niece by cruelty, that she might have the use of her property. "I am sure it is no more than she deserves," said Anne, tossing her head. "Perhaps so; but, Anne, if we come to talk of deserts, where should any of us be?" "She has got Hannah," said Anne. "Yes; and that is another reason for my staying. I don't trust Hannah. No, Anne: I love Lady Lucy, but I shall not leave Mrs. Bernard. Her husband was kind to mine when he needed kindness; her son was my foster-child, and dear to me as my own; and, for their sakes as well as hers, I shall stay." And so Margery stayed; and, when Hannah left, she became in time the sole servant in the lonely, deserted Grange House, where Mrs. Bernard wore her life away in bitter recollections, with nothing to sustain her but her own pride and resentment.