Seven years, and from a lovely child of eight years old Bessie McPherson had grown to a wonderfully beautiful girl of fifteen, whose face once seen could never be forgotten, it was so sweet, and pure, and refined, and yet so sad in its expression at times, as if she carried some burden heavier than the care of her father, who was fast sinking into a state of confirmed invalidism, and to whom she devoted all the freshness of her young life, with no thought for herself or her own comfort. And there was a shadow on the girl's life; a burden of shame and regret for the silly, frivolous mother, who spent so little time at home, but who flitted from place to place on the Continent, not always in the best of company but managing generally to hang on to some old dowager either English, French, or German, and so cover herself with an appearance of respectability.
Sometimes Lord Hardy was with her, and sometimes he was not, for as he grew older and knew her better, he began to weary of her a very little. Just now he was in Egypt, and before he started he sent her a receipt in full for all her indebtedness to him for borrowed money which he knew she could never pay. And Daisy had written to her husband that the debt was paid, and had given him to understand that a stroke of unparalleled success had enabled her to do it. When her mother died two years before, and left a few hundreds to her daughter, Archie had urged the necessity of sending the whole to young Hardy, but Daisy had refused and spent it for herself. Now, however, it was paid, and he was glad, and quite content with his uneventful life, even though, it was a life of the closest economy and self-denial for himself and Bessie.
When Daisy had plenty she divided with the household at Stoneleigh, and when she had little she kept it for herself, and Archie and Bessie shifted for themselves--or rather the latter did, and was sometimes almost as hungry as she had been when she ate the dry bread and shriveled grapes on the fifth floor back of some large hotel.
Bessie understood perfectly her mother's mode of life, and knew that though she was not degraded in the worst sense of the word, she was an adventuress and a gambler, whom good, pure women shunned, and over whom she mourned as a mother mourns for the child which has gone astray. And yet Bessie's life was a comparatively happy one, for she had her father, and she had Neil, her cousin, the handsome and spirited boy from Eton, and later the dashing student from Oxford, who came sometimes to Stoneleigh and made the place like heaven to the young girl blooming there unseen and unknown to the great world outside, and Bessie hoped to see him soon, for she was going with her father to London, where she had never been since she was a child, and of which she did not remember much. This journey had cost Bessie a great deal of anxiety and planning as to how they could afford it; but by saving a little here and there, and by extra self-denials on her part, sufficient money for the journey, and for a week in town, was raised at last, and the trip decided upon. Bessie would have liked a new dress and hat for herself, and a new coat for her father, but these were out of the question, so she brushed and cleaned her father's three-year-old coat, and washed and ironed her two-year-old Holland linen, freshened up a blue ribbon for her last year's hat, mended her gloves, put plenty of clean collars, and cuffs, and handkerchiefs, in her bag, borrowed Dorothy's umbrella, and was ready to start on her journey without a thought that she might look a little old-fashioned and countrified in the gay city. They found some cheap lodgings in the vicinity of High street, Kensington, and then she sent her card to Neil, who came at once, and tried to be gay, and appear as usual, but she felt that he was ill at ease, and the old hair cloth sofa and chairs looked shabbier than ever to her, when she saw his critical eyes upon them, and felt how out of place he was in that humble room, with his fashionable dress and town-bred air of elegance and luxury.