became an out-and-out American, and only lamented that she could not
vote and take part in the politics of the country. Of her past life she
never spoke, and of her family seldom. Her father and mother were dead;
she had two brothers, both well enough in their way, but wholly unlike
each other, she had once told Lucy Grey, whom she had always liked, and
with whom she was more intimate than with any one else in Allington,
unless it were Hannah Jerrold. Although very proud of her family name
and family blood, she was no boaster, and no one in Allington would ever
have known that one of her brothers had been in Parliament, and that his
wife was a Lady Jane Trevellian, if chance had not thrown them in the
way of Mrs. Geraldine.

Once, and once only, had she returned to her native land, and that two
or three years before our story opens. Then she had been absent three or
four months, and when she returned to Allington, she seemed grimmer and
sterner than ever, and more intolerant of everything which did not savor
of the "naked truth." And yet, as Lucy Grey had said of her to her
sister, she was true as steel to her friends, and at heart was one of
the kindest and best of women, and, with the exception of Miss Lucy
Grey, no one in Allington was found so often in the houses of the poor
as she, and though she rebuked sharply when it was necessary, and told
them they were dirty and shiftless when they were, she made her kindness
felt in so many ways that she was, if possible, more popular than Lucy
herself, for, while Lucy only gave them money and sympathy, she helped
them with her hands, and, if necessary, swept their floors, and washed
their faces, and made their beds, and sometimes took their children home
and kept them with her for days.

Such was Miss Betsey McPherson, who, as she is to figure conspicuously
in this story, merits this introduction to the reader, and who, in her