Sad to say, such was not the case in the Raymount household. The Father cannot bear rudeness any more than wrong in his children—the comparison is unfit for rudeness is a great and profound wrong, a wrong to the noblest part of the human being. And a mere show of indifference is sometimes almost as bad as the rudest of words. The more guilty a man is of such faults, the less he is conscious of it.

But, despite his pleasant contrast with her brother, Vavasor did not move the deepest in Hester. How should he? With that deepest he had developed no relation. There were worlds of thought and feeling already in motion in Hester’s universe, while the vaporous mass in him had hardly yet begun to stir. He was living on the surface of his being, all the more exposed to earthquake and volcanic eruption because he had never yet suspected the existence of the profound depths from which they rose. Hester, on the other hand, was already beginning to discover some of the abysses of the nature gradually unfolding in her. When Vavasor was gone she turned with greater diligence to her musical studies.

Amy Amber continued to be devoted to her, and when Hester was practicing would come about for as long as she could. Hester’s singing seemed to enchant and fascinate the girl. But a change had already begun to show itself in Amy. The shadow of an unseen cloud was occasionally visible in her expression. As the days went by, the signs of her discomfort grew deeper. She moved about her work with less energy, and her smile did not come as readily. Both Hester and her mother saw the change. In the morning, when Amy was always the first one up, she was generally cheerful, but as the day passed, the cloud came. Happily, however, her diligence did not let up. Sound in health, and active by nature, she took a positive delight in work. In another household she would have been invaluable. But as it was, she was growing daily less and less happy.

One night she appeared in Hester’s room, as usual, before going to bed. Her small face had lost, for the time, a great part of its beauty, and was dark as a thundercloud. She tried to smile, but only a wounded smile would come.

“My poor Amy! What is the matter?” cried Hester.

The girl burst into tears.

“Oh, miss, I would like to know what you would do in my place!”

“I’m afraid if I were in your place, I should do nothing so well as you do, Amy,” said Hester. “But tell me what is the matter. What has made you so miserable?”

“It’s not one thing nor two, nor even twenty things!” answered Amy, ceasing her crying and now looking sullen with the feeling of heaped-up wrong. “What would my mother say to see me treated so! She used to trust me. I don’t understand how those two prying, suspicious old maids can be my mother’s family!”