Here Miss Betsey stopped, and taking a card from the bit of tissue paper in which it was wrapped, gazed earnestly and with a feeling of intense yearning and bitter disappointment upon the beautiful face, whose great wide-open, blue eyes looked at her, just as they had looked at her on the sands at Aberystwyth. The photographer's art had succeeded admirably with Bessie, and made a most wonderful picture of childish innocence and beauty, besides bringing out about the mouth and into the eyes that patient, half sorry expression which spoke to Miss Betsey of loneliness and hunger far up in the fourth and fifth stories of fashionable hotels, where the little girl often ate her smuggled dinner of rolls and nuts and raisins, and whatever else her mother could convey into her pocket unobserved by those around her.
"Yes, she looks as if a big slice of plum pudding or mince pie would do her good! Poor little thing, and I am not to have her," Miss Betsey said, with a lump in her throat, as she continued reading: "You saw her once, I know, three years ago, at Aberystwyth, though she had no idea then who the funny woman was who asked her so many questions. Why didn't you make yourself known to us? Archie would have been delighted to meet you. He never saw you, I believe. And why didn't you speak to me when I went by as Bessie says I did? Was Archie with me, I wonder? or, was it young Lord Hardy from Dublin, Archie's best friend? He was with us there, and sometimes walked with me when Archie was not inclined to go out. He is very nice, and Archie is very fond of him, while to Bessie and me he is like a brother."
Here Miss Betsey stopped again, and taking off her spectacles harangued the tortoise-shell cat, who was sitting on the rug and looking at her.
"Archie's friend! her brother! Humbug! It does make me so mad to see a married woman with a young snipper-snapper of a fellow chasing after her, and using her husband as a cover. Mark my words, the woman who does that is not a pure, good woman at heart, or in thought, though outwardly she may be sweet as sugar; and her husband-"Well, he is both weak and unmanly to allow it, and is looked upon with contempt."
To all this Mrs. Tortoise-shell purred an assent, and the lady went on with the letter.
"Bessie is wailing for me to go for a walk, and so I must bring this letter to a close. Archie sends his love, and will, with me, be very glad to welcome you to your old home, should you care to visit it. When I was a child I thought it the grandest place in the world, but it is very much run down, for we have no money with which to keep it up, and have only the two servants, Anthony and Dorothy, both of whom are getting old. And yet I do not complain of Archie for not trying to do something. Once, however, before we were married I tried to rouse him to something like energy, and caring for himself, but since seeing the world, his world I mean, for you know of course I am not what would be considered his equal socially, I have changed my mind, and do not blame him at all. Brought up as he was with an idea that he must not work, it is very hard for him to overcome early prejudices of training and education, and I think his uncle, the Hon. John, would be intensely mortified to have his nephew in trade, though he is very careful not to give him any thing toward his support, and we are so poor that even a hundred pounds would be a fortune to us. Maybe some good angel will send it to us by and by.