"Bessie McPherson!"

"No, no; oh, no!" Flora gasped in a whisper, "it is Betsey, ma'am; it is
for you."

"Hush! I know what I am about," was whispered back, and so Bessie
McPherson, and not Betsey, was received into Christ's flock and signed
with the sign of the cross, and given to the happy mother happier than
she dared to own because of the change of name.

The next day five hundred dollars were placed in the Allington Savings
Bank to the credit of Bessie McPherson Bowen, and the spinster washed
her hands of the whole affair, as she expressed it to herself. But she
could not quite forget the child, and when on the Monday evening after
the christening she sat by her open fire with her round tea table at her
side, there was a thought of it in her mind, and she said to herself:

"I am glad I did not give it my name. Betsey is not very poetical, and
they are sure to call you Bets when they are angry at you. Bessie is
better and sweeter every way."

And then her thoughts went over the sea after that other Bessie, her own
flesh and blood, of whom she had not heard in years. It was very seldom
that her brother John wrote to her, and when he did he never mentioned
Archie or his family, and so she knew nothing of them except that Daisy
was still carrying on her business at Monte Carlo and was known as an
adventuress to every frequenter of the place. But where was Bessie? Miss
McPherson asked herself, us she gazed dreamily into the fire. Was she
like her mother, a vain coquette and a mark for coarse jests and vulgar
admiration?

"For the girl must be pretty," she said, "There was the promise of great
beauty in that face, and true, pure womanhood, too, if only she were
well brought up."

And then through the woman's heart there shot a pang as she wondered if
she had done right to leave Archie and his child to their poverty all
these years. Might she not have done something for them, and so perhaps
have saved the daughter from sin? The little room at the head of the
stairs was still kept just as it was when she was expecting Bessie.
There was the big doll in the corner, the dishes on the shelf, and the
single bed with its lace hangings was freshly made every month, and by
its side each night the lonely woman knelt and prayed for the little
girl who had come to her on the sands and looked into her eyes with a
look which had haunted her ever since. But of what avail was all this?
Ought she not to have acted as well as praye