"'Where is your papa?' I asked, and she replied: "'At the Queen's Hotel, but it is awful expensive there, and papa says we can't afford it much longer. But mamma says we must stay till she finds some place to visit. There she is now, and that is Lord Hardy with her; they are going over to the old ruins,' and she pointed to a young woman in the distance, bedizened out in white muslin and blue ribbons, with her yellow hair hanging down her back, and her big straw hat in her hand instead of on her head; and she was talking and laughing and coquetting with a short, spindle-legged chap, not much taller than herself, and looking with his light curly hair and mustache like a poodle-dog.
"'Who did you say he was?' I asked, and the child answered me: "'Lord Hardy, mamma's friend. He is very rich and very nice. He gives me lots of things, and sometimes buys us all first class tickets, and then it is so grand. I don't like to go second-class, but, you see, papa is very poor.'
"'How, then, can he afford to stop at expensive hotels?' I asked, and she said, while a shadow came over her face: "'We couldn't if we didn't have one small room on the top floor, where I sleep on the lounge. I never go to table d'hote but stay in my room and eat whatever mamma can slip into her pocket without the waiters seeing her. Sometimes it is not much, and then I am so hungry; but mamma will get us an invitation to visit somebody soon, and then I can eat all I want.'"
The guests had listened very attentively to this recital, and none more so than Grey, who leaned eagerly forward, with quivering lips and moistened eyes, as he exclaimed: "Poor little girl, how I wish she had some of my dinner! Why didn't you bring her home with you, away from her wicked mother?"
Miss McPherson did not reply, for there dawned upon her suddenly a fear lest she had talked too much, and her manner changed at once, while she sank into an abstracted mood, and her eyes had in them a far-off look, as if she were seeing the child who came to her upon the sands of Aberystwyth and looked into her face with eyes she had never been able to forget, and which she could now see so plainly, though the little girl was thousands of miles away.
Dinner being over Hannah said it was time for her to go home, and Lucy accordingly ordered the sleigh to be brought to the door.