She had heard of Daisy’s death from her brother only a few days before, and had felt a pang of regret that she had treated her quite so harshly on the occasion of her visit to her.

“I might, at least, have been civil to her, though it did make me so mad to see her smirking up into my face, with all those diamonds on her, and to know that she was even trying to fool young Allen Browne.”

And then her thoughts went after Bessie, for whom her brother had asked help, saying she was left entirely alone in the world, and was, for aught he knew, a very nice girl.

“It is impossible for me to care for her,” he wrote, “and as my wife paid all the expenses of her sickness in Rome and for bringing the body home, she will do no more.  So it rests with you to care for Bessie, I should think you would like some young person with you in your old age.”

“In my old age!” Miss Betsey repeated to herself, as she sat thinking of John’s letter, “Yes, I suppose it has come to that, for I am in my sixties, and the boys call me the old woman when I order them out of the cherry tree, and still I feel almost as young as I did forty years ago when Charlie died.  Oh, Charlie, my life would have been so different had you lived;” and in the eyes usually so stern and uncompromising there were great tears, as the lonely woman’s thoughts went back to the long ago, and the awful tragedy which had darkened all her life.

And then it was that, in the midst of her softened mood, a little girlish figure, dressed in black, came up the steps and knocked timidly at the open door.  Bessie had left her luggage at the station, and walked to the house which was pointed out to her as Miss McPherson’s by a boy who volunteered to show her the way, and who said to her: 

“She’s a queer old cove, and if you don’t mind your p’s and q’s she will take your head off.  She’s game, she is.”

This was not very reassuring, and Bessie’s heart beat rapidly as she went up the steps to the door.  She saw the square, straight figure in the chair, and was prepared for the quick, sharp “Come in!” which answered her knock.

Adjusting her spectacles to the right focus, Miss Betsey looked up at her visitor in that scrutinizing, inquisitive manner usual with her, and which made Bessie’s knees shake under her as she advanced into the room.

“Who are you?” the look seemed to say, and without waiting to have it put into words Bessie went straight to the woman, and stretching out her hands said, imploringly: 

“Oh, Aunt Betsey, do you remember a little girl who came to you on the Terrace at Aberystwyth years ago?  Little Bessie McPherson, to whom you sent a ring?  Here it is,” and she pointed to it upon her finger, “and I am she—­Bessie, and mother is dead—­and I—­I am all alone, and I have come to America—­to you—­not to have you keep me—­not to live upon you, but to earn my living—­to work for money with which to pay my debts.  Two hundred and fifty pounds to Lady Jane for mother’s sickness and burial, and five pounds to Anthony.  That is the sum—­two hundred and fifty-five pounds.  Will you let me stay to-night?  Can you find me something to do?”