“An overseer in some cotton mills!—­factories they call them there.  Not if I know myself!” he said. “I stoop to that?  Never!  The old woman is a fool,” (this with an adjective), “and she evidently thinks she is doing a big thing.  Two thousand dollars a year!  Why, that is not much more than mother allows me now, and I am awfully hard up at times.  No, Bessie, you must wait a little longer until something turns up, as I am sure there will.  An overseer! I!” and Neil’s voice was indicative of the scorn and contempt with which he regarded an overseer of cotton mills, and the vast difference he felt there was between such an individual and himself.

Neil was very sore and very much depressed, and his depression told upon his health, and he became so pale and haggard that his mother was alarmed, and insisted upon his leaving England for a time and going down to Cannes, in Southern France, where several of her friends were spending the winter.  To this Neil made no objection, and wrote to Bessie of his plans, and made himself out so great an invalid that Bessie felt a fear in her heart lest her lover should die and she be left in the world alone, in case—­She did not dare finish the thought, or put into words her conviction that her father was daily growing weaker, with less care for or interest in any thing passing around him.  This change for the worse had commenced with a heavy cold, taken soon after the holidays, and which none of Dorothy’s prescriptions could reach.  It was in vain that Bessie tried to persuade him to let her call a physician.

“No, child,” he said, “it’s nothing.  I shall be better in a few days, when the weather moderates.  I do not want a doctor, and if I did we are too poor.  How much have we on hand?”

Bessie did not tell him the exact amount, for fear of troubling him in his weak, nervous condition.

Their Christmas hospitalities had cost them dear, and there was very little in the family purse with which to meet their necessities.  Just after Neil’s departure there had come a letter from Daisy, who was in Nice, with some Americans, whose acquaintance she had made in Paris and whose party she had joined.

“These American friendships cost a great deal,” she wrote, “for they stop at the most expensive hotels, and I must have a parlor and bedroom in order to keep up appearances, so I really have nothing to spare just now; but I send you a five-pound note which I borrowed for you from Mr. Jack Trevellian, who came day before yesterday and told me of his visit to Stoneleigh.  If I am any judge, he is more than half in love with you, and when I said I was going to write and regretted that I could not send you any money, as I was sure you must need it after so much company, he insisted upon loaning me twenty pounds, and when I refused so large a sum he made me take ten, which I will divide with you.  It was very generous in him, and when I said I should pay him as soon as possible,