tifully poor that she had to eat six crackers the
less a week to pay her fee to the Sewing Circle, knew that it was in her
power--HERS--to send Leslie Gray's daughter to Europe for her musical
education! If she chose to use her "pull" with Andrew Cameron--if she
went to him and asked him to send Sylvia Gray abroad the next
year--she had no doubt whatever that it would be done. It all lay with
her--if--if--IF she could so far crush and conquer her pride as to stoop
to ask a favour of the man who had wronged her and hers so bitterly.

Years ago, her father, acting under the advice and urgency of Andrew
Cameron, had invested all his little fortune in an enterprise that had
turned out a failure. Abraham Lloyd lost every dollar he possessed, and
his family were reduced to utter poverty. Andrew Cameron might have been
forgiven for a mistake; but there was a strong suspicion, amounting to
almost certainty, that he had been guilty of something far worse than
a mistake in regard to his uncle's investment. Nothing could be legally
proved; but it was certain that Andrew Cameron, already noted for his
"sharp practices," emerged with improved finances from an entanglement
that had ruined many better men; and old Doctor Lloyd had died
brokenhearted, believing that his nephew had deliberately victimized
him.

Andrew Cameron had not quite done this; he had meant well enough by
his uncle at first, and what he had finally done he tried to justify to
himself by the doctrine that a man must look out for Number One.

Margaret Lloyd made no such excuses for him; she held him responsible,
not only for her lost fortune, but for her father's death, and never
forgave him for it. When Abraham Lloyd had died, Andrew Cameron, perhaps
pricked by his conscience, had come to her, sleekly and smoothly, to
offer her financial aid. He would see, he told her, that she never
suffered want.

Margaret Lloyd flung his offer back in his face after a fashion that
left nothing to be desired in the way of plain speaking. She would die,
she told him passionately, before she would accept a penny or a favour
from him. He had preserved an unbroken show of good temper, expressed
his heartfelt regret that she should cherish such an unjust opinion of
him, and had left her with an oily assurance that he would always be her
friend, and would always be delighted to render her any assistance in
his power whenever she should choose to ask for it.

The Old Lady had lived