“I mean to treat everybody civilly in my own house, but if I say anything I must tell the naked truth.  I believe Bessie is a true girl, as you say; but I have my doubts of you.  I have heard much of your career; have talked with those who have seen you in that hell at Monte Carlo, bandying jests with young profligates and blear-eyed old men, more dangerous than the younger ones because better skilled in evil.  I saw you myself on the terrace at Aberystwyth, flirting as no married woman should flirt with that whiffet, Lord Hardy, who, it seems, is here with you, and whom perhaps you think to capture now that you are free.  But let me tell you that men seldom pick up and wear a soiled garment, particularly when they have helped to soil it.  Lord Hardy will never marry you, and my advice is that you go home, as you ought to have done at once.  Go back to your child and be a mother to her; but, as you hope for heaven, never try to drag her down where you are.  You talk of poverty.  You do not show it.  Those diamonds in your ears never cost a small sum, nor that solitaire upon your finger.”

“They were given to me,” Daisy sobbed, as she rose to her feet and put on her hat preparatory to leaving, while Miss Betsey continued: 

“Given to you!  The more shame for you to take them.  Better throw them away than wear them as a badge of degradation.  Yes, throw them away, or send them back whence they came.  Wash that paint off your face.  Get rid of that made-up smirk around your mouth.  Remember that you are going on toward forty.”

“Oh-h!” Daisy groaned; “I am not quite thirty-six.”

“Well, thirty-six, then,” the spinster rejoined.  “There’s a wide difference between thirty-six and sixteen.  You are a widow; you have a grown-up daughter.  You are no longer young, though you are good enough looking, but good looks will not support you honestly.  Go home and go to work, if it is only to be a bar-maid at the George Hotel; and when I see you have reformed, I do not say I will not do something for you, but just so long as you go round sponging your living and making eyes at men—­and boys, too, for that matter—­not a penny of my money shall you ever touch.  I’ve said my say, and there comes the boy Allen for you.  Good-morning.”

She arose to take her peas to the kitchen.  The conference was ended, and with a flushed face and wet eyes Daisy went out to the phaeton, into which Allen handed her very carefully, and then took his seat beside her.  He noticed her agitation, but did not guess its cause, until she said, with a little gasping sob: 

“I was never so insulted in my life as by that horrid old woman.  Had I been the vilest creature in the world she could not have talked worse to me.  She said I was living upon your people—­sponging she called it; that I was after Lord Hardy—­and—­and—­oh, Allen—­even you—­the boy she called you, and she bade me go home and hire out as bar-maid at the George Hotel in Bangor.”