"And after it," he said, looking her in the eyes--"when the fuss was over--I remember seeing you in Aunt Alsie's arms. Have you forgotten how she cried over you, and defended you--and begged you off? You were ill with terror and excitement; she took you off to the cottage, and nursed you till you were well again, and it had all blown over; as she did again and again afterward. Have you forgotten _that_--when you say that no one loved you?" He turned upon her with that bright penetrating look, with its touch of accusing sarcasm, which had so often given him the mastery over erring souls. For Meynell had the pastoral gift almost in perfection; the courage, the ethical self-confidence and the instinctive tenderness which belong to it. The certitudes of his mind were all ethical; and in this region he might have said with Newman that "a thousand difficulties cannot make one doubt." Hester had often yielded, to this power of his in the past, and it was evident that she trembled under it now. To hide it she turned upon him with fresh anger. "No, I haven't forgotten it!--and I'm _not_ an ungrateful fiend--though of course you think it. But Aunt Alsie's like all the others now. She--she's turned against me!" There was a break in the girl's voice that she tried in vain to hide. "It isn't true, Hester! I think you know it isn't true." "It _is_ true! She has secrets from me, and when I ask her to trust me--then she treats me like a child--and shakes me off as if I were just a stranger. If she holds me at arm's-length, I am not going to tell her all _my_ affairs!" The rounded bosom under the little black mantle rose and fell tumultuously, and angry tears shone in the brown eyes. Meynell had raised his head with a sudden movement, and regarded her intently. "What secrets?" "I found her--one day--with a picture--she was crying over. It--it was some one she had been in love with--I am certain it was--a handsome, dark man. And I _begged_ her to tell me--and she just got up and went away. So then I took my own line!" Hester furiously dashed away the tears she had not been able to stop. Meynell's look changed. His voice grew strangely pitiful and soft. "Dear Hester--if you knew--you couldn't be unkind to Aunt Alice." "Why shouldn't I know? Why am I treated like a baby?" "There are some things too bitter to tell,"--he said gravely--"some griefs we have no right to meddle with. But we can heal them--or make them worse. You"--his kind eyes scourged her again--"have been making everything worse for Aunt Alsie for a long time past."