Sometimes she even looked at Winona with a wistfulness that the girl noticed.

It puzzled her, for it was the same half-appealing glance that her mother often cast at her.

She was accustomed to shoulder her mother's burdens, and loved her all the more for her helplessness and dependence.

But Aunt Harriet, so strong and determined and capable, the oracle of the family, and the very epitome of all the cardinal virtues, surely _she_ could not want any one to lean upon?
The idea was unthinkable.

Yet again and again it returned to her, and the consciousness of it stirred new chords.
One evening Winona came rather softly into the drawing-room.