her. But she was very ignorant. She knew little of
the world and English affairs, and she found the women about her so
well informed on these subjects that she began to feel herself at a
certain disadvantage. This roused her pride, and she set to work to
inform herself on many subjects of which she had hitherto been
ignorant.

One means to this end was the reading of newspapers, and this
occupation now absorbed a part of every morning. In this way she
occasionally came upon Horace Spotswood's name, and when she did, a
strange agitation would possess her. She could not quite shake off an
influence which this man's life seemed to exert upon hers. Lord
Hurdly would have had her believe that she had bestowed a great
benefit upon Horace, as it was through her that he was in the
possession of his present independent fortune, but there was no voice
so strong as the one in her own heart which told her that she had
wronged him. Here and there she had picked up the impressions of
many different people concerning this young diplomatist, and
unquestionably the aggregated effect was one of admiration. The brief
notices of him which she read in the papers confirmed this impression
of him. He was doing well, for a man of his years, in diplomacy, and
he was doing more than well in the work he had undertaken for the
relief of the famine-stricken population near him.

It was Horace's interest in this cause which had given rise to
Bettina's interest in it, and she began to read eagerly all that she
could find on the subject. As a result her heart was, for the first
time in her life, awakened to an intense perception of the suffering
of the world at large. It was a new emotion to her, and one which
throbbed through all her consciousness with a power which changed her
individuality even to herself. She began to think for the first time
of the utter recklessness with which she had been spending the large
sums of money which Lord Hurdly placed at her disposal. Her
expenditure of these sums heretofore had met with his entire
approval, as she could never have too rich a wardrobe to please him.
It was all a part of his own glory and importance, and he never asked
a question as to how the money went.

But now the tide within Bettina's heart had turned. As she read of
the sufferings of these starving people, the thought of her own
excess of luxuriousness sickened her. The more she felt within her
soul that nameless sadness which no outside he