"I don't take it," said Rotha. "Your things do not suit me, as your mother has just said. You may do what you like with it; but you do not give it to me!" Mr. Busby looked from one to the other. "Do you expect me to buy new everything for you?" Mrs. Busby asked now. "Is it not good enough? I suppose it is much better than any hat you ever had before in your life." "But it is not mine," said Rotha. "It never was given to me. I never heard anything of it until now, when Antoinette fetched it because she did not want Mr. Busby to see what sort of a hat I really had. Thank you! I do not take it." "But it is yours!" cried Antoinette. "I have given it to you. Do you think I would wear it, after giving it away?" "If it was convenient, you would," said Rotha. "You may lay your account with not having any hat, then, unless you wear this," said Mrs. Busby. "You may take your choice. If you receive Antoinette's kindness so, you must not look for mine." "Your kindness, and hers, are the very strangest sort I ever heard of in my life," said Rotha. "What am I to understand by all this?" asked the perplexed Mr. Busby, looking from the hat to the faces of the speakers. "Only, that I never heard of that hat's being intended for me until this minute," said Rotha. "Rotha," said her aunt quietly, "you may go up stairs." "What did you bring it down for, Nettie?" "Because you took an insane fancy to see Rotha's bonnet, papa; so I brought it." "That is not true, Mr. Busby," Rotha said, standing up to go. "It is not your hat?" "No, sir." "Mr. Busby, if you would listen to Antoinette's words," said his wife with her lips very compressed, "you would understand things. Rotha, I said you might go." Which Rotha did, Antoinette at the same moment bursting into tears and flinging the hat on the dinner table. What followed, Rotha did not know. She climbed the many stairs with a heavy heart. It was war to the knife now. She was sure her aunt would never forgive her. And, much worse, she did not see how she was ever to forgive her aunt. And yet--"if thy neighbour hath ought against thee"--. Rotha had far more against _her_, she excused herself, in vain. The one debt was not expunged by the other. And, bitter as her own grievances seemed to her, there was a score on the other side. Not so would Mr. Digby have received or returned injuries. Rotha knew it. And as fancy represented to her the quiet, manly, dignified sweetness which always characterized him, she did not like the retrospect of her own behaviour. So true it is, that "whatsoever doth make manifest is light." No discourse could have given Rotha so keen a sense of her own failings as that image of another's beautiful living. What was done could not be undone; but the worst was, Rotha was precisely in the mood to do it over again; so though sorry she was quite aware that she was not repentant.