"You think, then," she said, "that I shall not grow well just yet,
Roland?"

"No, my darling, not just yet," he replied.

What words of mine could ever describe what that sick room became? It
was a paradise of beautiful flowers, singing birds, little fragrant
fountains and all that was most lovely. After a time visitors came, and
my mother saw them; the poor came, and she consoled them.

"My lady" was with them once more, never more to walk into their
cottages and look at the rosy children. They came to her now, and that
room became a haven of refuge.

So it went on for three years, and I woke up one morning to find it was
my thirteenth birthday.




CHAPTER V.


That day both my parents awoke to the fact that I must have more
education. I could not go to school; to have taken me from my mother
would have been death to both of us. They had a long conversation, and
it was decided that the wisest plan would be for me to have a
governess--a lady who would at the same time be a companion to my
mother. I am quite sure that at first she did not like it, but afterward