“Whom do you mean by ’they’?” Helen asked, coming near to her, and sitting down upon the bed.

There was a resentful gleam in the blue eyes usually so gentle, as Katy answered: 

“Whom do I mean?  His folks of course!  They have been the instigators of every sorrow I have known since I left Silverton.  Oh, Helen, never, never marry anybody who has folks, if you wish to be happy.”

Helen could not repress a smile, though she pitied her sister, who continued: 

“I don’t mean Father Cameron, nor Bell, nor Jamie, for I love them all, and I believe that they love me.  Father does, I know, and Jamie, while Bell has helped me so often; but Mrs. Cameron and Juno—­oh, Helen, you will never know what they have been to me.”

“I notice you always say ‘father’ and ‘Mrs. Cameron.’  Why is that?” Helen asked, hoping thus to divert Katy’s mind from her present trouble, and feeling a little anxious to hear Katy’s real sentiments with regard to her husband’s family.

Since Helen came to New York there has been so much to talk about that, though Katy had told her of her fashionable life, she had said comparatively little of the Camerons.  Now, however, there was no holding back on Katy’s part, and beginning with the first night of her arrival in New York she told what is already known to the reader, and more, exonerating Wilford in word, but dealing out full justice to his mother and Juno, the former of whom controlled him so completely.

“I tried so hard to love her,” Katy said, “and if she had given me ever so little in return I would have been satisfied, but she never did—­that is, when I hungered for it most, missing you at home, and the loving care which sheltered me in childhood.  After the world took me into favor she too began to caress me, but I was wicked enough to think it all came of selfishness.  I know I am hard and bad, for when I was sick Mrs. Cameron was really very kind, and I began to like her; but if she takes baby away, I shall surely die.”

Katy had come back to the starting point, and in her eye there was the same fierce look which Helen had at first observed.

“Where is baby to be sent?” Helen asked, and Katy answered: 

“Up the river, to a house which Father Cameron owns, and which is kept by a farmer’s family.  I can’t trust Kirby.  I do not like her.  She keeps baby asleep too long, and acts so cross if I try to wake her, or hint that she looks unnatural.  I cannot give baby to her care, with no one to look after her, though Wilford says I must.”

“Why then do you try to resist, when you know how useless it is?” Helen asked, and something in her manner brought a sudden flush of shame to Katy’s cheek, as she said: 

“What do you mean?  Of what are you thinking?”

Helen did not stop to consider the propriety of her remarks, but replied: 

“I was thinking that you reminded me of a bird beatings wings against the bars of its cage, vainly hoping to escape into the freedom which it feels is outside its prison house, but falling back bruised and bleeding with its efforts, and no nearer escape.”