isy had plenty she divided with the household at Stoneleigh, and
when she had little she kept it for herself, and Archie and Bessie
shifted for themselves--or rather the latter did, and was sometimes
almost as hungry as she had been when she ate the dry bread and
shriveled grapes on the fifth floor back of some large hotel.

Bessie understood perfectly her mother's mode of life, and knew that
though she was not degraded in the worst sense of the word, she was an
adventuress and a gambler, whom good, pure women shunned, and over whom
she mourned as a mother mourns for the child which has gone astray. And
yet Bessie's life was a comparatively happy one, for she had her father,
and she had Neil, her cousin, the handsome and spirited boy from Eton,
and later the dashing student from Oxford, who came sometimes to
Stoneleigh and made the place like heaven to the young girl blooming
there unseen and unknown to the great world outside, and Bessie hoped to
see him soon, for she was going with her father to London, where she had
never been since she was a child, and of which she did not remember
much. This journey had cost Bessie a great deal of anxiety and planning
as to how they could afford it; but by saving a little here and there,
and by extra self-denials on her part, sufficient money for the journey,
and for a week in town, was raised at last, and the trip decided upon.
Bessie would have liked a new dress and hat for herself, and a new coat
for her father, but these were out of the question, so she brushed and
cleaned her father's three-year-old coat, and washed and ironed her
two-year-old Holland linen, freshened up a blue ribbon for her last
year's hat, mended her gloves, put plenty of clean collars, and cuffs,
and handkerchiefs, in her bag, borrowed Dorothy's umbrella, and was
ready to start on her journey without a thought that she might look a
little old-fashioned and countrified in the gay city. They found some
cheap lodgings in the vicinity of High street, Kensington, and then she
sent her card to Neil, who came at once, and tried to be gay, and appear
as usual, but she felt that he was ill at ease, and the old hair cloth
sofa and chairs looked shabbier than ever to her, when she saw his
critical eyes upon them, and felt how out of place he was in that humble
room, with his fashionable dress and town-bred air of elegance and
luxury.

"I say, Dot, why in the name of wonder did you stumble into such a hole
as this? C