“Now that I don’t know,” Michael answered with a sigh. “She decided within an hour and off she went. It might have been to consult her cousin that looks after her business affairs and that used to live here when he was a boy.” “What was her cousin’s name?” The rain had almost ceased, so Elizabeth laid aside her hoe, stretched her cramped fingers and went to stand in front of Michael and ply him with questions. Such a talkative mood was so rare in him that she feared, any second, it might pass away, and, since here at last was some one who could and would tell her more of Miss Miranda, she trembled lest silence should come suddenly upon him before she had heard what she wished to know. The rain was pattering from her skirts, her feet sank every moment deeper into the mud, but she feared to move or turn away lest the spell should break. Good fortune seemed to be with her, however, for Michael talked on and on, relighting his pipe as often as the water quenched it, and answering her queries to the best of his ability. “His name was Don, Mr. Donald Reynolds he is now, and I find it hard to remember when I see him, that they were ever little things here together and he was her Cousin Don. I never liked the lad, and began to mistrust him from the first I knew of him, when his face was just beginning to look keen and sharp and he was learning to think it was a great joke that he could so easily get the better of the other two, Miss Miranda and Mr. Ted, and shape things to go all his way. Now he is rich and prosperous and beginning to grow fat, but still he has that sharp, selfish face. He has forgotten how to be kind to Miss Miranda, he has forgotten how good she was to him when he was a snub-nosed boy with long legs and skinned knees and the both of them with no mother. Yes, he has forgotten all that, has Mr. Donald Reynolds.” “And you think she has gone somewhere to consult him?” Elizabeth asked. “She goes to see him rarely, more often he comes here. And she dreads his coming always. I begin to know when it is time for another visit from him, when she starts at the creaking of the gate and begins to look frightened when she hears a step coming up the path. She has been in worse uneasiness than ever, these last weeks, so I’m thinking she just decided that it was better to dare than to dread, so she was off to see him and have it over.” “But why,” persisted Betsey, “why should she be afraid of her own cousin when he grew up with her?”