Was she angry, and if so, at what?  Bessie wondered, as she returned to her room, and sitting down by the bed laid her tired head upon the pillow, while a few tears rolled down her cheeks as she recalled her aunt’s sharp tones.  Was this to be all the commendation she was to receive for the pains she had taken to please?  It was hard, and there began to steal over her a feeling of utter hopelessness and homesickness, when suddenly a sound came up to her from the parlor below, which made her start and listen as to something familiar.  Surely she had heard that loud, uncultivated voice before, and after a moment it came to her—­the tea party in the dear old garden at home when Mrs. Rossiter-Browne was the guest, and had so disgusted her with her vulgarity.  And this was Mrs. Browne, who had come in state to call, and who, after declaring the weather hot enough to kill cattle, and saying that Gusty was in Saratogy, and had had twelve new dresses made to take with her, spoke next of Allen and Lord Hardy, who were in Idaho, or Omaho, or some other ho, Mrs. Browne could not remember which.  At the mention of Lord Hardy’s name all Bessie’s old life seemed to come back to her, and she lived again through the dreary days at the crowded hotels, and ate her dinner of dry bread and shriveled grapes in the back room of the fourth floor, and saw her mother radiant with smiles bandying jests with the young Irish lord, while her father looked on with a sorry expression on his face, the very memory of which brought a rain of tears to Bessie’s eyes.  Allen had just written to his mother a description of his travels, and she was giving Miss McPherson her version of it.  Another lord had joined them, she said, a regular English swell, and they attracted so much attention, and the people were so curious to see them, that they were actually obliged to travel in a cognito, though what under the sun that was she was sure she didn’t know.  She thought she had been in most everything there was goin, but she’d never seen a cognito, which must be some Western contrivance or other.  At this ludicrous mistake, so characteristic of Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, Bessie forgot her tears and laughed hysterically until she heard her mother’s name, when she instinctively grew quiet and rigid as a piece of marble, for what Mrs. Browne said was this: 

“And so the poor little critter is dead!  Well, I must say she was about the prettiest woman I ever saw, but I guess she wasn’t just what I s’posed she was when I took such a shine to her.  She was a born flirt, and mebbe couldn’t help it, but she might have let Allen alone—­a mere boy.  Why, he was that bewitched after her that he fairly lost flesh, and told me to my face that he should never see another woman he liked as he did her, and he’d never got over it neither if Lord Hardy hadn’t taken him in hand and told him something—­I’ve no idea what, for Allen would never tell me, only it did the business, and there was no more whimperin’ for that woman.”