Beth's heart smote her, and she watched her mother for some time, yearning to say something to comfort her. "I don't think you need be so distressed, mamma," she ventured at last "What have I done, after all? I've committed no crime." "You've done just about as bad a thing as you could do," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You've made the whole place talk about you. You must have known you were doing wrong. But I think you can have no conscience at all." "I think I have a conscience, only it doesn't always act," Beth answered disconsolately. "Very often, when I am doing a wrong thing, it doesn't accuse me; when it does, I stop and repent." She was sitting beside the dining-table, balancing a pencil on her finger as she spoke. "Look at you now, Beth," her mother ejaculated, "utterly callous!" Beth sighed, and put the pencil down. She despaired of ever making her mother understand anything, and determined not to try again. "Beth, I don't know what to do with you," Mrs. Caldwell recommenced after a long silence. "I've been warned again and again that I should have trouble with you, and Heaven knows I have. You've done a monstrous thing, and, instead of being terrified when you're found out, you sit there coolly discussing it, as if you were a grown-up person. And then you're so queer. You ought to be a child, but you're not. Lady Benyon likes you; but even she says you're not a child, and never were. You say things no sane child would ever think of, and very few grown-up people. You are _not_ like other people, there's no denying it." Beth's eyes filled with tears. To be thought unlike other people was the one thing that made her quail. "Well, mamma, what am I to do?" she said. "I hate to vex you, goodness knows; but I must be doing something. The days are long and dreary." She wiped her eyes. "When people warned you that you would have trouble with me, they always said unless you sent me to school." Mrs. Caldwell rocked herself on her chair forlornly. "School would do you no good," she declared at last. "No, Beth, you are my cross, and I must bear it. If I forgive you again this time, will you be a better girl in future?" "I don't believe it's my fault that I ever annoy you," Beth answered drily. "Whose fault is it, then?" her mother demanded. Beth shrugged her shoulders and began to balance the pencil on her fingers once more. Mrs. Caldwell got up and stood looking at her for a little with a gathering expression of dislike on her face which it was not good to see; then she went towards the door. "You are incorrigible," she ejaculated as she opened it, making the remark to cover her retreat. Beth sighed heavily, then resolved herself into a Christian martyr, cruelly misjudged--an idea which she pursued with much satisfaction to herself for the rest of the day.