"Yes, ma'am. You are my Aunt Rosalinda."
Miss Quest took the seat which Cleland offered and sat down, drawing the child to her knee. She looked at her for a long while without speaking.
Later, when Stephanie had been given her congé, in view of lessons awaiting her in the nursery, Miss Quest said to Cleland, as she was going:
"I'm not blind. I can see what you are doing for her—what you have done. The child adores you."
"I love her exactly as though she were my own," he said, flushing.
"That's plain enough, too.... Well, I shall be just. She is yours. I don't suppose there ever will be a corner in her heart for me.... I could love her, too, if I had the time."
"Is not what you renounce in her only another sacrifice to the noble work in which you are engaged?"
"Rubbish! I like my work. But it does do a lot of good. And it's quite true that I can not do it and give my life to Stephanie Quest. And so——" she shrugged her trim shoulders—"I can scarcely expect the child to care a straw for me, even if I come to see her now and then."
Cleland said nothing. Miss Quest marched to the door, held open by Meacham, turned to Cleland:
"Thank God you got her," she said. "I failed with Harry; I don't deserve her and I dare not claim responsibility. But I'll see that she inherits what I possess——"