“Well, she’s a strange child. Strange! But she used to be different. I always thought she seemed a little lost and lonely, you know. That was mostly because of her mother—no mother at all, in reality. Just a butterfly. In spite of that Elsie was agreeable and tender once. Quite a dear. But since she has come to live with me she has been entirely a changed person. You must believe, though, Kate, that there is no more reason for her to be unfriendly toward you than there is for her to be unfriendly toward me. And I am speaking truly when I say there has hardly been a friendly moment between us since she came into my home. She is polite, beautifully polite. I suppose that absurd fashionable boarding school she was sent to taught her manners. But it goes no deeper. How do you feel about it? Is there anything unkind or wrong in the way I treat Elsie? Have you noticed anything in the brief time you have been here?”

Kate was amazed to have Aunt Katherine so appealing to her. All barriers were down between them. They were talking as two girls might, or two women.

“Nothing unkind, of course! I don’t know how you could be kinder. But, Aunt Katherine, do you truly like Elsie? It may be that she feels, in spite of your kindness, that you just don’t like her.”

“Does it seem that way to you?”

“No—perhaps not. But there is something in your voice when you speak to her—a difference. I don’t know how to express it. If you truly don’t like her, perhaps you can’t help showing it a little.”

Aunt Katherine said no more for a while. But she was thinking. “It’s queer,” she said finally, “very queer, the way I am talking to you. I am treating you as though you were your mother almost. And you are like your mother, in deep ways. Only you are franker, more open. You say right out the things that she might think but wouldn’t say. Well, and since I am saying things right out, too—I don’t like Elsie. You are right there. I tried to. But I simply couldn’t. She is too unnatural, too cold and heartless, and perhaps self-seeking. The irony of it is that she is all I have left to love, the only person in the world who needs me now—or, rather, the only person who will let herself use me. But I can’t like her.”

Kate was embarrassed at this revelation, and at the same time deeply sorry for her aunt. For the present the subject dropped between them.

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