d a dog. I cannot help being pretty any more than you; I cannot sew
myself up in a bag, and shall not try to catch the small-pox, so do not
worry me again with this sickly sentiment about respectability, and the
duties of a wife. I know my own business, and can protect my own
reputation."

After this there was nothing more to be said. Daisy went back to her
profession, and Bessie took up the old life again with an added burden
of care and anxiety, and with a resolve that she would use for herself
personally just as little as possible of the money her mother sent them.
Often and often had she speculated upon and tried to fancy the class of
men her mother associated with, and whom Lady Jane called her victims,
and now here was one beside her, speaking and acting like a gentleman,
and she felt her blood tingle with bitter shame and humiliation. Had her
mother fleeced _him_, she wondered, and at last, lifting her sad eyes to
his face, she said:

"Do you know my mother well? Did you ever--play with her?"

"Yes, often," he replied; "side by side at _rouge et noir_, and at cards
and chess where she is sure to beat. She bears a charmed hand, I think,
or she would not be so successful."

He had lost money by her then, and Bessie at once found herself thinking
that if she only knew how much, and who he was, she would pay it back
pound for pound when she made a fortune.

In a vague kind of way she entertained a belief that somewhere in the
world there was a fortune awaiting her; that little girl of fifteen
summers, who sat there in Hyde Park, in her old washed linen dress and
faded ribbons, with such a keen sense of pain in her heart for the
mother who bore her, and pity for herself and her father. The latter had
paid but little intention to what she was saying to her companion, for
when he was not engrossed in the passers-by he had been half asleep, but
when he caught the names _rouge et noir_ and cards, he roused up and
said:

"Sir, my daughter has never played for money in her life, and never
will."

"I am sure she will not," the stranger rejoined, "though many highly
respectable ladies do;" then, as if he wished to chance the subject, he
turned to Bessie and said: "If Neil McPherson is your cousin there ought
to be some relationship between you and me, for he is my cousin, too."

"Yours?" Bessie asked, in some surprise, and he replied:

"Yes, my father and his mother were cousins. I am Jack Trevellian. You
have prob