An Ambitious Man

Instead of offering her house for sale, she offered "Rooms to Let,"

and turned the family mansion into a fashionable lodging-house.

Its central location, and its adjacence to several restaurants and

boarding houses, rendered it a convenient place for business people

to lodge, and the handsome widow found no trouble in filling her

rooms with desirable and well-paying patrons. In a spirit of fun,

people began to speak of the old Brown mansion as "The Palace," and

in a short time the lodging-house was known by that name, just as its

mistress was known as "Baroness Brown."

The Palace yielded the Baroness something like two hundred dollars a

month, and cost her only the wages and keeping of three servants; or

rather the wages of two and the keeping of three; for to Berene

Dumont, her maid and personal attendant, she paid no wages.

The Baroness did not rise till noon, and she always breakfasted in

bed. Sometimes she remained in her room till mid-afternoon. Berene

served her breakfast and lunch, and looked after the servants to see

that the lodgers' rooms were all in order. These were the services

for which she was given a home. But in truth the young woman did

much more than this; she acted also as seamstress and milliner for

her mistress, and attended to the marketing and ran errands for her.

If ever a girl paid full price for her keeping, it was Berene, and

yet the Baroness spoke frequently of "giving the poor thing a home."

It had all come about in this way. Pierre Dumont kept a second-hand

book store in Beryngford. He was French, and the national

characteristic of frugality had assumed the shape of avarice in his

nature. He was, too, a petty tyrant and a cruel husband and father

when under the influence of absinthe, a state in which he was usually

to be found.

Berene was an only child, and her mother, whom she worshipped, said,

when dying, "Take care of your poor father, Berene. Do everything

you can to make him happy. Never desert him."

Berene was fourteen at that time. She had never been at school, but

she had been taught to read and write both French and English, for

her mother was an American girl who had been disinherited by her

grandparents, with whom she lived, for eloping with her French

teacher--Pierre Dumont. Rheumatism and absinthe turned the French

professor into a shopkeeper before Berene was born. The grandparents

had died without forgiving their granddaughter, and, much as the

unhappy woman regretted her foolish marriage, she remained a patient

and devoted wife to the end of her life, and imposed the same

patience and devotion when dying on her daughter.