much better for you to
return to your own people--ahem--_own people_," said Mr. Starkweather,
with emphasis. "Now--er--you are rather shabby, I fear, Helen. I am not as
rich a man as you may suppose. But I---- The fact is, the girls are
ashamed of your appearance," he pursued, without looking at her, and
opening his bill case.

"Here is ten dollars. I understand that a young miss like you can be
fitted very nicely to a frock downtown for less than ten dollars. I advise
you to go out to-morrow and find yourself a more up-to-date frock
than--than that one you have on, for instance.

"Somebody might see you come into the house--ahem!--some of our friends, I
mean, and they would not understand. Get a new dress, Helen. While you are
here look your best. Ahem! We all must give the hostage of a neat
appearance to society."

"Yes, sir," said Helen, simply.

She took the money. Her throat had contracted so that she could not thank
him for it in words. But she retained a humble, thankful attitude, and it
sufficed.

He cared nothing about hurting the feelings of the girl. He did not even
inquire--in his own mind--if she _had_ any feelings to be hurt! He was so
self-centred, so pompous, so utterly selfish, that he never thought how he
might wrong other people.

Willets Starkweather was very tenacious of his own dignity and his own
rights. But for the rights of others he cared not at all. And there was
not an iota of tenderness in his heart for the orphan who had come so
trustingly across the continent and put herself in his charge. Indeed,
aside from a feeling of something like fear of Helen, he betrayed no
interest in her at all.

Helen went out of the room without a further word. She was more subdued
that evening at dinner than she had been before. She did not break out in
rude speeches, nor talk very much. But she was distinctly out of her
element--or so her cousins thought--at their dinner table.

"I tell you what it is, girls," Belle, the oldest cousin, said after the
meal and when Helen had gone up to her room without being invited to join
the family for the evening, "I tell you what it is: If we chance to have
company to dinner while she remains, I shall send a tray up to her room
with her dinner on it. I certainly could not _bear_ to have the Van
Ramsdens, or the De Vornes, see her at our table."

"Quite true," agreed Hortense. "We never could explain having such a
cousin."

"Horrors, no!" gasped Flossie.

H