Granny looked at her for a moment in silence. "Your manners haven't improved since you went home," she said severely. "If I'd spoken to my grandmother like that, I'd have been sent to bed." A new difficulty opened before Mona's troubled mind. If she was rude, or idle, or disagreeable, the blame for it would fall upon Lucy, and that would be an injustice she could not bear. Now that she had lost her she realised how good Lucy had been to her, and how much she loved her. For her sake, she would do all she could to control her temper and her tongue. She had coloured again--with indignation this time--hot words had sprung to her lips in defence of Lucy, but she closed them determinedly, and choked the words back again. She felt that she could say nothing; she felt, too, that Lucy would not wish her to say anything. She could not explain so as to make her granny understand that it was not Lucy's fault that she was rude and ill-tempered. It was by acts, not words, that she could serve Lucy best. And for her sake she _would_ try. She would try her very hardest to control her temper and her tongue. The determination brought some comfort to her poor troubled heart. At any rate, she would be doing something that Lucy would be glad about. Her confession, though, remained unspoken. CHAPTER VIII. Mona did try to be good, she tried hard, but she was very, very unhappy. She missed her home, she missed Lucy, and her father, and her freedom. She longed, too, with an intolerable longing, for the sight and the sound of the sea. She had never, till now that she had lost them, realised how dearly she loved the quaint little steep and rambling village, with the sea at its foot, and the hills behind it. She was always homesick. Perhaps if she had been sent to Hillside, and it had been her plain duty to live there, and nowhere else, she might have felt more happy and settled. Or, if granny had been the same indulgent, sympathetic granny as of old, but she had placed herself where she was by her own foolish, unkind act, which she now bitterly repented; and she was there with a cloud resting on her character and motives. She had shown herself ungrateful and unkind; she had played a coward's part, and had bitterly pained her father and Lucy. They did not reproach her--she would have felt better had they done so-- but she knew. And, after all, granny did not want her, or so it seemed!