"I am an orphan," reflected Lydia Raymond, with immense satisfaction. She was a very intelligent little girl of twelve years old, and she remembered very well that when her father had died out in China, three years ago, it was her mother who had been the centre of attention and compassion. People had spoken about her poor dead father, and had praised him and pitied him, but their real attention had all been for the widow, who was there under their eyes, pathetic and sorrow-stricken. Lydia herself had been "poor little thing," but Grandpapa and her aunts and uncle had all told her that it was her mother who must be thought of now, and she knew that they kept on saying to one another that "the child will be a comfort to poor Mary." Her own individuality, which she felt so strongly, did not seem to count at all, and Lydia had, quite silently, resented that intensely, ever since she could remember anything at all.