She left a blank, which was never quite filled up, in the lives of her sister Maria and her small cousin Elisabeth. The former bore her sorrow better, on the whole, than did the latter, because she had acquired the habit of bearing sorrow; but Elisabeth mourned with all the hopeless misery of youth. "It is no use trying to make me interested in things," she sobbed in response to Christopher's clumsy though well-meant attempts to divert her. "I shall never be interested in anything again--never. Everything is different now that Cousin Anne is gone away." "Not quite everything," said Christopher gently. "Yes; everything. Why, the very trees don't look the same as they used to look, and the view isn't a bit what it used to be when she was here. All the ordinary things seem queer and altered, just as they do when you see them in a dream." "Poor little girl!" "And now it doesn't seem worth while for anything to look pretty. I used to love the sunsets, but now I hate them. What is the good of their being so beautiful and filling the sky with red and gold, if _she_ isn't here to see them? And what is the good of trying to be good and clever if she isn't here to be pleased with me? Oh dear! oh dear! Nothing will ever be any good any more." Christopher laid an awkward hand upon Elisabeth's dark hair, and began stroking it the wrong way. "I say, I wish you wouldn't fret so; it's more than I can stand to see you so wretched. Isn't there anything that I can do to make it up to you, somehow?" "No; nothing. Nothing will ever comfort me any more; and how could a great, stupid boy like you make up to me for having lost her?" moaned poor little Elisabeth, with the selfishness of absorbing grief. "Well, anyway, I am as fond of you as she was, for nobody could be fonder of anybody than I am of you." "That doesn't help. I don't miss her so because she loved me, but because I loved her; and I shall never, never love any one else as much as long as I live." "Oh yes, you will, I expect," replied Christopher, who even then knew Elisabeth better than she knew herself. "No--I shan't; and I should hate myself if I did." Elisabeth fretted so terribly after her Cousin Anne that she grew paler and thinner than ever; and Miss Farringdon was afraid that the girl would make herself really ill, in spite of her wiry constitution. After much consultation with many friends, she decided to send Elisabeth to school, for it was plain that she was losing her vitality through lack of an interest in life; and school--whatever it may or may not supply--invariably affords an unfailing amount of new interests. So Elisabeth went to Fox How--a well-known girls' school not a hundred miles from London--so called in memory of Dr. Arnold, according to whose principles the school was founded and carried on.