ss you for asking me!) I could do you a service, I turned it
over in my mind, and I gave up one plan and took up another, and it's all
settled now. Bessy is to leave school and come and live with me. Don't,
please, offer me money again. You don't know how glad I have been to do
anything for you. Have not I, Margaret Dawson? Did you not hear me say,
one day, I would cut off my hand for my lady; for am I a stock or a
stone, that I should forget kindness? O, I have been so glad to work for
you. And now Bessy is coming here; and no one knows anything about
her--as if she had done anything wrong, poor child!"

"Dear Miss Galindo," replied my lady, "I will never ask you to take money
again. Only I thought it was quite understood between us. And you know
you have taken money for a set of morning wrappers, before now."

"Yes, my lady; but that was not confidential. Now I was so proud to have
something to do for you confidentially."

"But who is Bessy?" asked my lady. "I do not understand who she is, or
why she is to come and live with you. Dear Miss Galindo, you must honour
me by being confidential with me in your turn!"

CHAPTER XIII.

I had always understood that Miss Galindo had once been in much better
circumstances, but I had never liked to ask any questions respecting her.
But about this time many things came out respecting her former life,
which I will try and arrange: not however, in the order in which I heard
them, but rather as they occurred.

Miss Galindo was the daughter of a clergyman in Westmoreland. Her father
was the younger brother of a baronet, his ancestor having been one of
those of James the First's creation. This baronet-uncle of Miss Galindo
was one of the queer, out-of-the-way people who were bred at that time,
and in that northern district of England. I never heard much of him from
any one, besides this one great fact: that he had early disappeared from
his family, which indeed only consisted of a brother and sister who died
unmarried, and lived no one knew where,--somewhere on the Continent, it
was supposed, for he had never returned from the grand tour which he had
been sent to make, according to the general fashion of the day, as soon
as he had left Oxford. He corresponded occasionally with his brother the
clergyman; but the letters passed through a banker's hands; the banker
being pledged to secrecy, and, as he told Mr. Galindo, having the
penalty, if he broke his pledge