When mother died, my aunt entreated me to live with her and leave the doctor alone in his glory. My answer was: No, I should not think of leaving my own home if my stepfather were out of it, and I was not to be driven out because he chose to stay. I had the power to turn him out, and should have done so but for the baby. The little one was my mother’s; I could not have turned a child of my mother’s out of a home that had been my mother’s. So I continued to live in the home that had come to me from my father. I occupied a set of rooms over the parlour-floor and took my meals in my own apartments, where I was attended by a maid who waited upon me and upon nobody else. The child was called after my mother, and her name was mine--Marian. If in passing up or down stairs I met the little creature in its nurse’s arms, I would take it and kiss it, perhaps, and toss it a moment or two and then go my way. God forgive me, I could never bring myself to love that child. I never could think of it as my mother’s, but as Mr. Stanford’s. The sight, the sound of it would bring all my father into my heart, and I’d fall into a sort of passion merely in thinking that the memory of such a man should have been betrayed. I dare say you will consider all this as an excess of loyalty in me. But loyal even to exaggeration my nature was to those I loved. It is no boast--merely a saying which this tale should justify. After the death of my mother, the money paid to me through my trustees rose to an income of hard upon five hundred a year. I rejoice to say that Mr. Stanford got not one penny. My mother had been without the power to will away a farthing of what my father had left her. Otherwise I don’t doubt the doctor would have come off with something more substantial than a ten-month memory and my sullen toleration of his plate upon the door.