"No, but she was the dearest," Beth replied. "I may have others to love, but she was the one who loved me. She never said I had no affection for any one; she never said I was selfish and thought of nothing but my own interests. If she had to find fault with me, she did it so that she made me want to be better. She was never unkind, she was never unjust, and now I've lost her, I have no one." "It is your own fault then," said Mrs. Caldwell, apt as usual to say the kind of thing with which fatuous parents torment the genius-child. "You are so determined not to be like other people that nobody can stand you." "I am not determined to be unlike other people," Beth exclaimed, turning crimson with rage and pain. "I want to be like everybody else, and I _am_ like everybody else. And I am always ready to care for people too, if they will let me. It isn't my fault if they don't like me." "It _is_ your fault," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You have an unhappy knack of separating yourself from every one. Look at your Uncle James. He can hardly tolerate you." "He's a fool, so that doesn't matter," said Beth, who always dealt summarily with Uncle James. "I can't tolerate him. But you can't say I separate myself from Aunt Grace Mary. She likes me, and she's kind; but she's silly, and when I'm with her any time it makes me yawn. Is _that_ my fault? And did I separate myself from Kitty? Did I separate myself from papa? Do I separate myself from Count Bartahlinsky? Have I separated myself from Aunt Victoria?--and who else is there?" "You gave Aunt Victoria plenty of trouble while she was here," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined drily. "Well, that is true, at all events," Beth answered in a broken voice; and then she bowed her head on the old French grammar, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Mrs. Caldwell looked up from her work at her from time to time frowning, but she was too much ruffled by some of Beth's remarks to say anything consoling; and Beth, absorbed in her grief, lost all consciousness of everything outside herself. At last, however, a kindly hand was laid on her head, and some one stroked her hair. "That is the way she goes on, and I don't know what to do with her," Mrs. Caldwell was saying. "Come, Beth, rouse yourself," she added sharply. Beth looked up, and found that it was Aunt Grace Mary who was stroking her hair. "Poor little body!" said Aunt Grace Mary as if she were speaking to an infant, then added in a sprightly tone: "Come, dear! Come, dear! Wipe your eyes. Mamma will be here directly--my mamma--and Uncle James, and Mr. Watson." "What are they coming for?" said Beth. "Oh, _your_ mamma knows," Aunt Grace Mary answered archly. "Mr. Watson was poor dear Aunt Victoria's lawyer, and he has brought her will, and is going to read it to us." "Am I to be sent out of the room?" Beth asked. "Of course," said Mrs. Caldwell. "It isn't a matter for you at all."