them with indulgence. Mrs. Winchester was a born aunt or grandmother. She took up the spoiling just where a mother's firmness ceased.

She cared very little for Sherman, who was three years older than Carolina, and who resembled his Northern mother as closely as Carolina modelled herself upon her father, except that Sherman was weak, whereas Mrs. Lee, as a De Clifford of England, inherited great strength of character as well as a calm judgment and a governable quality, which made her an admirable helpmeet for the fiery, if controlled, nature of her Southern husband.

Never was there a happiness so complete as Carolina's seemed to be. She grew from a beautiful child into a still more beautiful young girl. She absorbed her education without effort, learning languages from much travel and from hearing them constantly spoken, and breathing in the truest culture from her daily surroundings. How could an intelligent girl be ignorant of art and science and literature and diplomacy when she heard them discussed by some of the greatest minds of the day as commonly as most children hear continual conversations about the shortcomings of the servants? She did not realize that she was unusually equipped because it had been absorbed as unconsciously as the air she breathed, but other American girls who came into contact with her felt and resented it or admired it, according to their calibre.

In religion Carolina was outwardly orthodox and conventional, but many were the discussions she and her father held on the subject, in strict privacy, and many were the questions she put to him which he could not answer. He often ended these interrogations by gathering her up in his arms and saying: "My little girl will need a new religion, made especially for her, if she continues to trouble her head about things which no man knoweth!"

"But why don't they know, dearest? And why does the Bible contradict itself so? And how can God be a 'father' if he sends pain and sickness and death? Is He any worse than a real father would be? And why does He not answer prayers when He promises to? And when did the healing Jesus taught His disciples disappear? Did He only let them possess the power for a few years? Why are we commanded to be 'perfect' when God knows we can't be? And how can you believe in a God who punishes you and sends all manner of evil on you while calling Himself a God of Love?"

"Carolina! Carolina! You make my head swim with your heresies! I don't know, child! I don't know the answer to a single one of your questions. Such things do not trouble me. I believe in God, and that satisfies me."

"No, it doesn't, daddy!" cried the girl, astutely, "but you try to make yourself believe that it does."

"Then try to make yourself believe it, dear. It has done me very well for nearly forty years."

And as usual, such footless discussion ended in nothingness and a burst of human love which effectually put out of mind all gropings after Divine Love!

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST GRIEF

Then, with no illness to prepare her for so awful a blow, with nothing but a stopping of the heart-beats, Carolina's father fell into his last, long sleep, and before she could fairly realize her loss, her mother followed him.

Within six weeks, the girl found herself orphaned and mistress of the great Lee fortune, but utterly alone in the world, for her grandfather had died the year previous and Sherman had just married and gone back to America.

That Carolina felt her mother's loss no one could doubt, but the change in the young girl wrought by her father's death was something awful to behold. She had not dreamed that he could die. He was so young, so strong, so noble, so upright, such an honour to his country and to his race! Why should perfection cease to exist and the ignorant, wicked, and common live on? Carolina resisted the thought with tigerish fierceness, and openly blasphemed the God who created her.

"God my father?" she stormed at Cousin Lois, who listened with blanched face and trembling fear of further vengeance on the part of outraged Deity. "Why, would my own precious father send me a moment of such suffering as I have passed through ever since they took him away from me? He would have given his life to save me from one heart-pang, and you ask me to believe that God is a father, when He sends such awful anguish into this world?"

"He sends it for your good, Carolina, dear," pleaded Cousin Lois.

"Oh, He does, does He? He thinks it will do me good to suffer? Daddy thought so, didn't he? Daddy liked to make me unhappy, didn't he? He didn't realize how blissful heavenly love could be, so he only loved me in a poor, blind, earthly fashion, which made every day a joy and every hour we spent together a song! Poor daddy! To be so ignorant of the real way to love his children!"

"Oh, Carolina!" moaned Mrs. Winchester.

"God hates me, Cousin Lois," said the girl, dropping her impassioned manner and speaking with bitter calmness.

"I have been recognizing it for some time. I have felt that He was jealous of my happiness. You know it says: 'For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.' He admits it Himself. So He took vengeance on me through His power and killed my parents just to show me that He could! But if He thinks that I am going to kneel down and thank Him for murder, and love Him for ruining my life--"

A steel blue light seemed to blaze from the girl's eyes as she thus raised her tiny hand and shook it at her Creator.

Cousin Lois burst into tears. Carolina viewed her without sympathy.

"I am so little," she said, suddenly. "It is a brave thing for God to pit His great strength against mine, isn't it? Listen to me, Cousin Lois, I am done with religion from now on. I will never say another prayer as long as I live. The worst has happened to me which could happen. Nothing more counts."

It was while she was in this terrible state of mind that Mrs. Winchester took charge of her.

Sherman and his wife came over for the funeral of their father, and before they could so arrange their affairs as to be able to leave for home, they were called upon to bury, instead of try to console, their mother.

Neither Carolina nor Mrs. Winchester liked Adelaide, Sherman's wife. She was selfish and ignorant, but, with true loyalty to their own, they never expressed themselves on the subject, even to each other. After the period of mourning was over, they accepted her invitation to visit her, and spent a month in New Work. Then, with no explanation whatever, Mrs. Winchester and Carolina went abroad and travelled--travelled now furiously, now in a desultory way; now stopping for one month or six; now hurrying away from a spot as if plague-stricken--all at Carolina's whim.

It was a strange life for an ardent young American to lead, but Noel St. Quentin and Kate Howard, who knew Carolina best, shook their heads, and fancied that the two travellers found in Mrs. Sherman Lee their incentive to remain away from America so long and so persistently.

Mrs.