get you, and right here where I am kneeling now, I have often knelt by
this little bed prepared for you years ago, and prayed God to keep you
innocent and pure, and send you to me some day. And he has done all
this. He has kept you pure and good, and send you to me just when I
want you most, I am a queer, crabbed old woman, but I believe I can make
you happy, and by and by you may learn to love me a little. Few have
ever done that; none in fact, since my mother died, but one, and he--oh,
Bessie, I would give my life to have him back, and more than my life to
know that it was well with him. Charlie, oh, Charlie, my love, my love!"

Bessie's tears were all dried now, and her arms were around the neck of
this strange woman, weeping for her lost love as women never weep save
when the memory of that love brings far more pain than joy.

"Dear auntie," Bessie said, "I do not quite under stand what you mean,
but if I can comfort you I will, and work for you, too, I do not in the
least mind that, and I must do something to pay--"

"Hush child!" Miss Betsey rejoined, almost impatiently, as she drew
herself from Bessie's embrace and rose to her feet. "Never again trouble
your head about your debts. I sent the two hundred and fifty pounds to
my brother's wife yesterday, and told her what I was doing to you, and
what I meant to do if you passed the ordeal unscathed, and any time you
choose you can write to Anthony and send him twenty pounds, or more, if
you like. What is mine is yours, so long as my opinion of you remains
unchanged. I did not like your mother; I am free to tell you that. I was
angry with your father for marrying her, and angrier still when I heard
of the life she led--heard of her at Monte Carlo, of which I never think
without a shudder."

Miss McPherson had seated herself in a chair by this time, and over her
white face there came a rapt far-off look, and her hands were locked
together as she continued:

"Bessie, I may as well tell you now why I hate that place, and hate all
who frequent it. Charlie seems very near me to-night; my boy lover, with
the soft brown eyes and hair, and the sweet voice which always spoke so
tenderly to me, even when I was in my fitful moods. That was more than
forty years ago when he walked with me along the rose-scented lanes and
told me of his love, and talked of the happy future when I would be his
wife. Alas, he little dreamed what the future had in store, or of the
dreary, lone