rowded
hotels, and ate her dinner of dry bread and shriveled grapes in the back
room of the fourth floor, and saw her mother radiant with smiles
bandying jests with the young Irish lord, while her father looked on
with a sorry expression on his face, the very memory of which brought a
rain of tears to Bessie's eyes. Allen had just written to his mother a
description of his travels, and she was giving Miss McPherson her
version of it. Another lord had joined them, she said, a regular English
swell, and they attracted so much attention, and the people were so
curious to see them, that they were actually obliged to travel in a
_cognito_, though what under the sun that was she was sure she didn't
know. She thought she had been in most everything there was goin, but
she'd never seen a _cognito_, which must be some Western contrivance or
other. At this ludicrous mistake, so characteristic of Mrs.
Rossiter-Browne, Bessie forgot her tears and laughed hysterically until
she heard her mother's name, when she instinctively grew quiet and rigid
as a piece of marble, for what Mrs. Browne said was this:

"And so the poor little critter is dead! Well, I must say she was about
the prettiest woman I ever saw, but I guess she wasn't just what I
s'posed she was when I took such a shine to her. She was a born flirt,
and mebbe couldn't help it, but she might have let Allen alone--a mere
boy. Why, he was that bewitched after her that he fairly lost flesh, and
told me to my face that he should never see another woman he liked as he
did her, and he'd never got over it neither if Lord Hardy hadn't taken
him in hand and told him something--I've no idea what, for Allen would
never tell me, only it did the business, and there was no more
whimperin' for that woman."

"Oh, mother! poor mother!" Bessie moaned, as she covered her face with
her hands, feeling that her shame was greater than she could bear.

Going to the door she closed it, and so did not hear Mrs. Browne when
she said next:

"She had a lovely daughter, though, with a face like an angel. I'd swear
she was all right. Do you ever hear from her?"

For a moment Miss Betsey hesitated, for it was not a part of her plan to
let Mrs. Browne or any one see Bessie just yet; but her love for the
_naked truth_ prevailed, and she replied:

"Yes, she is here. She came yesterday in the Germanic. I will call her."

"Crying? What's that for?" she said to Bessie as she entered the room,
and feelin