It Might Have Been

ather at Skiddaw Force, her Aunt Temperance having supplied the place of the dead mother who had faded from her child's memory, for Helen passed away when her daughter was only two years old. It had not been exactly Dudley's choice which had placed Temperance in that position. He would have preferred his wife's youngest sister, Edith, to fill the vacant place of mother to his little girl; but Edith firmly though kindly declined to make her home away from Selwick Hall. The natural explanation of course was that she, being the only unmarried daughter of the house, preferred to remain with her parents. Edith said so, and all her friends repeated it, and thought it very natural and proper. And no one knew, except God and Edith, that the reason given was only half the truth, and that the last place in this world which Edith Louvaine could take was the place of that dead sister Helen who had so unconsciously taken the one thing which Edith coveted for herself. Thus thrown back on one of his own sisters, Dudley trie