"Well my dear, I don't see how it could be helped. I could not leave Annette in the house all by herself. I couldn't afford to make myself the town's talk. May be things will turn out better than you expect. We've got children of our own, and we don't know when we are gone, how they will fare." "That is true, but I never mean to bring my children up in such a way that they will be no use anywhere, and no one will want them." "Well, I don't see any other way than bringing Annette here." "Well, if I must, I must," she said with an air of despondency. Dr. Harcourt rode over to his sister's where Annette was spending the day and brought the doubly orphaned girl to his home. As she entered the room, it seemed as though a chill struck to her heart when her Aunt bade her good morning. There was no warm pressure in the extended hand. No loving light in the cold unsympathizing eyes which seemed to stab her through and through. The children eyed her inquisitively, as if wishing to understand her status with their parents before they became sociable with her. After supper Annette's uncle went out and her aunt sat quietly and sewed till bed time, and then showed Annette to her room and left the lonely girl to herself and her great sorrow. Annette sat silent, tearless, and alone. Grief had benumbed her faculties. She had sometimes said when grandmother had scolded her that "she was growing cross and cold." But oh, what would she not have given to have had the death-created silence broken by that dear departed voice, to have felt the touch of a vanished hand, to have seen again the loving glance of the death darkened eye. But it was all over; no tears dimmed her eye, as she sat thinking so mournfully of her great sorrow, till she unfastened from her neck a little keepsake containing a lock of grandmother's hair, then all the floodgates of her soul were opened and she threw herself upon her bed and sobbed herself to sleep. In the morning she awoke with that sense of loss and dull agony which only they know, who have seen the grave close over all they have held dearest on earth. The beautiful home of her uncle was very different from the humble apartments; here she missed all the freedom and sunshine that she had enjoyed beneath the shelter of her grandmother's roof. "Can you sew?" said her aunt to Annette, as she laid on the table a package of handkerchiefs. "Yes ma'm."