"I was just thinking how I have been your slave, beaten and cuffed like a dog for eighteen years, and I was wondering if in all that time, when I have been so patient and you so cruel, if you had in your heart one spark of love for your miserable grandchild!"
"Eh?" cried granny, staring at her fixedly, while Liane continued:
"Ever since I could toddle I have labored at your bidding, fetching and carrying, with nothing, but scoldings and beatings in return, and not a gleam of sunshine in my poor life. You have not shown me either mercy or pity; you have made my whole life as wretched as possible, and I have sometimes wondered why Heaven has permitted my sufferings to continue so long. Now, I have a strange feeling, as if somehow it was all coming to an end, and I wonder if you will miss me, and regret your unnatural conduct, when I am gone out of your life forever?"
She spoke with such sweet, grave seriousness that the old woman regarded her earnestly, noting, as she had never closely done before, the beauty and sweetness of the young eyes turned upon her with such pathetic solemnity.
"Maybe you mean to run away with some rascal, like your mother!" she sneered at length.
"I was not thinking of any man, or of running away, granny; only, it seems to me, there's a change coming into my life, and I am going out of yours forever!"
"Do you mean you're going to die?"
"No, granny, I mean that I shall be happy, after all these wretched years; that my starved heart will be fed on love and kindness, and I want to tell you now that if Heaven grants me the blessings I look for, I shall leave you that forty dollars as a gift, for then I shall not need it," returned Liane solemnly.
"Better give it here, now; you might forget when your luck comes to you. And—and, you ain't never going to need it after to-night, anyway!" returned granny, with a ghastly grin.