"Oh dear, no," answered Calista. "My aunt barely tolerates my existence. I should not be one bit surprised at her throwing me on my own resources any day. So, Miss Meeks, I shall be glad if you will let me help you at any time, not only because I like to be of use, but because I like to learn all I can." Unluckily, this speech was overheard by Antoinette Diaments. Antoinette hated Calista with all the venom of a small and mean nature, because of the scrape she had gotten into about Tessy's change; though Calista had nothing to do with the transaction, beyond being an accidental witness of it. Moreover, Antoinette considered Miss Meeks as her own particular property, and had hitherto, as we have said, succeeded in keeping that lady very much in the dark as to her real character. She, therefore, instantly resolved to "put a spoke in Calista's wheel," as she elegantly expressed it. "Well, Calista, I should think you would be ashamed to ask such a thing of Miss Meeks, after the way you were talking and laughing about her not half an hour ago." Miss Meeks's pale cheek flushed, and she cast one of her old suspicious glances at Calista. "Antoinette, what do you mean?" exclaimed Calista. "I have not said a word to any one but Mary Settson about Miss Meeks." "Just so; and you were laughing with her about Miss Meeks's throne and sceptre. I heard you myself." "You can ask Mary about it, Miss Meeks," said Calista. "Here she is. Mary, Antoinette says I was laughing about Miss Meeks to you this morning. Is that true?" Calista spoke with a trust in Mary's uprightness as firm as her trust in the ground she walked on. But even the ground is sometimes shaken. Mary had opened the gate of her heart to the world, and the world in turn opened to its friend the devil. If the ground had, indeed, opened under her feet, Calista could not have been more astounded than she was when Mary answered: "I don't know, of course, whether you were laughing at her or not. You certainly were laughing when you told me that you had been sitting in her throne and wielding her sceptre, and when you told how you went to her room and found her sick." Calista's face grew pale, and then flushed with honest indignation and wounded feeling. "Mary!" It was all she said. Miss Meeks looked keenly from one to another. She was clear-sighted enough when not blinded by prejudice or by the irritability of suppressed suffering, and she knew Mary's weakness far better than did Mary herself. "I shall believe what you say, Calista," said she. "Did you mean to turn me into ridicule or not?" "No, Miss Meeks, I never thought of such a thing—never." said Calista, with emphasis. "I did use those words, as any one might; but I no more thought of turning you into ridicule, or above all laughing about your illness, than I should think of laughing about my own dead mother."