When they did arrive, most of them were filled with elaborate excuses for her prolonged stay.

The money, she wrote, which Jane had sent her from time to time was ample for her needs; she was making many valuable friends, and she could not see how she could return until the following spring--a spring which never came.

In no one of them had she ever answered Jane's letter about Bart's death, except to acknowledge its receipt.

Nor, strange to say, had she ever expressed any love for Archie.

Jane's letters were always filled with the child's doings; his illnesses and recoveries; but whenever Lucy mentioned his name, which was seldom, she invariably referred to him as "your little ward" or "your baby," evidently intending to wipe that part of her life completely out.