'Ah, I have no one to love me now, but the dear good lady up at the Hall!' "'Don't I love you, Philip ?' "'No,' I replied scornfully, 'you don't love me, and you never did.' "'How do you know that ?' "'Because you never kiss me, and take me up in your lap, as Lady Moncton does, and look at me with kind eyes, and call me your dear boy.
No, no, when I come for you to love me, you push me away, and cry angrily, 'Get away, you little pest! don't trouble me!' and grandmother is always cursing me, and wishing me dead.

Do you call _that_ love ?' "I never shall forget the ghastly smile that played about her beautiful stern mouth, as she said unconsciously, aloud to herself: 'It is not the child, but the voice of God that speaks through him.

How can I expect him to love me ?' "How I wondered what she meant.

For years that mysterious sentence haunted my dreams.
"I was soon called to endure a heavier grief.

Lady Moncton's health daily declined.