This letter filled Bessie with disgust and anxiety, too, while for a moment there arose within her a feeling of rebellion and bitter resentment against the woman who got so much from life and left her to bear its burdens alone.

“But I would far rather be what I am than what she is,” she thought, as she wiped her tears away and stole softly to her father’s room to see if he were still sleeping.

He was usually in a half-unconscious condition now, seldom rousing except to take his meals, or when Bessie made a great effort to interest him, and she did not guess how fast he was failing.  The second week in June Daisy came, fresh and bright and eager, and looking almost as young as Bessie, who knew no rest day or night, and was pale and thin and worn, with a look on her face and in her eyes very sad to see in a young girl.

“Oh, mother, I am so glad you have come,” she cried, and laying her head in her mother’s lap, she sobbed passionately for a moment, while she said:  “And you will not go away; will not leave me here alone, with no one to speak to all day long but Dorothy.  Oh, mother, the loneliness is so terrible and life is so dreary to me.”

For a moment Daisy’s heart was stirred with pity for the tired, worn girl, and she half resolved to give up America and stay at home where she was needed.  But as the days went on and she saw just what life at Stoneleigh meant, she felt that she could not endure it, and, fondly stroking Bessie’s hair and smoothing her pale cheek, she told her she would not be gone long.  She should return in September and would positively remain at home all winter and take the care from Bessie.

“Your father will not die,” she said.  “People live years with his disease; he is better than when I first came home; at least he is more quiet, which is a gain.”

And so Bessie gave it up and entered at last into her mother’s anticipations of her journey, and listened with some interest to what she had to say of the Rossiter-Brownes, the best and most generous people in the world, for they were not only to bear all her expenses to and from America, but Mrs. Browne had given her a twenty-pound note for any little expenditures necessary for her journey.

“I am sure I don’t know why they fancy me as they seem to,” Daisy said, “unless they have an idea that I am a much more important personage than I am, and that to take me home as their guest will raise them in the estimation of their friends.  They know the McPherson blood is good, and they know about Lady Jane, who Mrs. Browne persists in thinking is my sister-in-law.  Did I tell you that the Rossiter-Brownes’ old home is near Allington, where your father’s aunt is living?”

“No,” Bessie replied, looking up with more interest in her manner.

“Well, it is,” Daisy continued, “and I mean to beard the old woman in her den and conquer a peace.  She has heaps of money, the Brownes say, and is greatly respected in spite of her oddities, and is quite an aristocrat in the little place; and, as I suspect, is far above Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, who wishes to show me to her.  She does not guess how the old woman hates us all.”