"I will own," she said tentatively, "that when I see you, my dear Annette, so different from what you were when you left us two years ago, so helpful, and so patient with poor Harriet, who is trying beyond words, so considerate and so thoughtful for others, I will own that I have sometimes hoped that the change might have been partly, I don't say entirely, but partly brought about by _Crooks and Coronets_, which I sent to you at Teneriffe, and into which I had poured all that was best in me. When you rejoined us here it seemed as if you had laid its precepts to heart." Aunt Maria looked at her niece almost imploringly. Annette was not of those who adhere to a rigid truthfulness on all occasions. She stroked her aunt's hand. "It was borne in on me at Teneriffe, after I was ill there, how selfish I had been," she said, and her voice trembled. "I ought never to have left you all. If only I had not left you all! Then I should not be--I shouldn't have--but I was selfish to the core. And my eyes were only opened too late." "No, my dear, not too late. Just in the nick of time, at the very moment we needed you most, after dear Cathie's death. You don't know what a comfort you have been to us." "Too late for Aunt Cathie," said Annette hoarsely. "Poor, kind, tired Aunt Cathie, who came to me in my room the last night and asked me not to leave her, told me she needed my help. But my mind was absolutely set on going. I cried, and told her that later on I would come back and take care of her, but that I must go. Self in her rainbow veil beckoned and--and I followed. If Aunt Cathie was the stepping-stone which groaned beneath my feet, what of that? What did I care? I passed over it, I trampled on it without a thought." The subdued passion in Annette's voice stirred anew the vague trouble in Aunt Maria's mind. For a moment her own view of life, even her heroine's puny and universally admired repentance, tottered, dwindled. For a brief moment she saw that the writer of _The Magnet_ made a great demand on his reader, and that Annette had passionately responded to it. For a moment Mr. Stirling's gentle, ruthless voice seemed to overthrow her whole position, to show her to herself as petty and trivial. For a moment she even doubted whether _Crooks and Coronets_ had really effected the great change she perceived in Annette, and the doubt disheartened her still more. She withdrew resolutely into the stronghold of her success, and rose slowly to her feet. "Well," she said, "it's time to go to bed. Close the shutters, Annette. It's very natural you should be impressed by _The Magnet_. I should have been at your age. Young people are always attracted by eloquence. But as one gets older I find one instinctively prefers plainer language, as one prefers plainer clothes, less word-painting, and more spiritual teaching." It was already late, but Annette sat up still later writing a long letter to Mrs. Stoddart. CHAPTER XX