"Still," I urged, "I wish you would find a better home. You cannot learn
to bear any more patiently than you do."

She shook her head.

"That shows that you don't know," she answered. "It seems to me right to
remain. Why, you know they can't hurt me any. Suppose they scold me
when I am not to blame, and my temper rises,--for I am very
quick-tempered"--

"Oh, no, Rachel!"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Browne! Suppose my temper rises, and I put it down, and
keep myself pleasant, do I not do myself good? And thinking about it in
this way, is not their unkindness a benefit to me,--to the real me,--to
the soul of Rachel Lowe?"

I hardly knew what to say. Somehow, she seemed away up above me, while I
found that I had, in common with the Brewsters, only in a different way,
taken for granted my own superiority.

"All this may be true," I remarked, after a pause, "but it is not the
common way of viewing things."

"Perhaps not," she answered. "My mother was not like other people. My
father was a strong man, but he looked _up_ to her, and he loved her;
but he killed her at last,--with his conduct, he killed her. But when
she was dead, he grew crazy with grief, he loved her so. He talked about
her always,--talked in an absent, dreamy way about her goodness, her
beauty, her white hands, her long hair. Sometimes he would seem to be