She had no pathos about her, not a touch.
Whatever her bodily sufferings may have been--and Bessie dimly hinted
that they were severe to agony at times--they were resolutely shut
within her chamber door; and when she came out in the early morning,
her cold brown hair drawn smoothly over those impassive cheeks, she
looked like a lady abbess--as cold, as unyielding and as hard.
There was small sympathy between the aunt and niece, but a great deal
of painstaking duty on the one side, and on the other the habit of
affection which young girls have for the faces they have always known.
Mrs. Sloman had been at pains to tell me, when my frequent visits to
her cottage made it necessary that I should in some fashion explain to
her as to what I wanted there, that her niece, Bessie Stewart, was in
nowise dependent on her, not even for a home. "This cottage we rent in
common. It was her father's desire that her property should not
accumulate, and that she should have nothing at my hands but
companionship, and"--with a set and sickly smile--"advice when it was
called for. We are partners in our expenses, and the arrangement can
be broken up at any moment."
Was this all? No word of love or praise for the fair young thing that
had brightened all her household in these two years that Bessie had
been fatherless?
I believe there was love and appreciation, but it was not Mrs.
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