“Not enough to hurt us,” said Gertrude.

“Hardly at all, thank you,” I said Elsie.  “I hope our mammas will not be alarmed about us, Gerty.”

“I don’t think they need be so long as there’s no thunder and lightning,” answered Gertrude.  “Ah, see how it is pouring over yonder on the mountain, Elsie!”

The pale face of the woman in the rocking-chair, evidently an invalid, had grown still paler and her features worked with emotion.

“Child! child!” she cried, fixing her wild eyes on Elsie, “who—­who are you?”

“They’re the young ladies from the Crags, mother,” said the girl soothingly.

“I know that, Sally,” she answered peevishly, “but one’s a visitor, and the other one called her Elsie, she’s just the age and very image of—­child, what is your family name?”

“Travilla, madam,” the little girl replied, with a look of surprise.

“Oh, you’re her daughter; yes, of course I might have known it.  And so she married him, her father’s friend and so many years older.”

The words were spoken as if to herself and she finished with a deep drawn sigh.

This woman had loved Travilla—­all unsuspected by him, for he was not a conceited man—­and there had been a time when she would have almost given her hopes of heaven for a return of her affection.

“Is it my mother you mean? did you know her when she was a little girl?” asked Elsie, rising and drawing near the woman’s chair.

“Yes; if she was Elsie Dinsmore, and lived at Roselands—­how many years ago? let me see; it was a good many; long before I was married to John Gibson.”

“That was mamma’s name and that was where she lived; with her grandpa, while her papa was away in Europe so many years,” returned the little Elsie; then asked with eager interest, “But how did you happen to know her? did you live near Roselands?”

“I lived there; but I was a person of no consequence; only a poor governess,” remarked the woman in a bitter tone; an expression of angry discontent settling down upon her features.

“Are you Miss Day?” asked Elsie, retreating a step or two with a look as if she had seen a serpent.

Her mother had seldom mentioned Miss Day to her, but from her Aunts Adelaide and Lora she had heard of her many acts of cruelty and injustice to the little motherless girl committed to her care.

“I was Miss Day; I’m Mrs. Gibson now.  I was a little hard on your mother sometimes, as I see you’ve been told; but I’d a great deal to bear; for they were a proud, haughty family—­those Dinsmores.  I was not treated as one of themselves, but as a sort of upper servant, though a lady by birth, breeding and education,” the woman remarked, her tone growing more and more bitter as she proceeded.

“But was it right? was it just and generous to vent your anger upon a poor little innocent girl who had no mother and no father there to defend her?” asked the child, her soft eyes rilling with tears.