child, Lord Brackenshaw is in Scotland, and knows nothing
about us. Neither your uncle nor I would choose to apply to him.
Besides, what could we do in this house without servants, and without
money to warm it? The sooner we are out the better. We have nothing to
carry but our clothes, you know?"

"I suppose you mean to go abroad, then?" said Gwendolen. After all,
this is what she had familiarized her mind with.

"Oh, no, dear, no. How could we travel? You never did learn anything
about income and expenses," said Mrs. Davilow, trying to smile, and
putting her hand on Gwendolen's as she added, mournfully, "that makes
it so much harder for you, my pet."

"But where are we to go?" said Gwendolen, with a trace of sharpness in
her tone. She felt a new current of fear passing through her.

"It is all decided. A little furniture is to be got in from the
rectory--all that can be spared." Mrs. Davilow hesitated. She dreaded
the reality for herself less than the shock she must give to Gwendolen,
who looked at her with tense expectancy, but was silent.

"It is Sawyer's Cottage we are to go to."

At first, Gwendolen remained silent, paling with anger--justifiable
anger, in her opinion. Then she said with haughtiness--

"That is impossible. Something else than that ought to have been
thought of. My uncle ought not to allow that. I will not submit to it."

"My sweet child, what else could have been thought of? Your uncle, I am
sure, is as kind as he can be: but he is suffering himself; he has his
family to bring up. And do you quite understand? You must remember--we
have nothing. We shall have absolutely nothing except what he and my
sister give us. They have been as wise and active a possible, and we
must try to earn something. I and the girls are going to work a
table-cloth border for the Ladies' Charity at Winchester, and a
communion cloth that the parishioners are to present to Pennicote
Church."

Mrs. Davilow went into these details timidly: but how else was she to
bring the fact of their position home to this poor child who, alas!
must submit at present, whatever might be in the background for her?
and she herself had a superstition that there must be something better
in the background.

"But surely somewhere else than Sawyer's Cottage might have been
found," Gwendolen persisted--taken hold of (as if in a nightmare) by
the image of this house where an exciseman had lived.

"No, indeed, dear. You know houses are sc