AN OLD MAN'S REST It was not without much reluctance, much debate with conscience, that Bunce allowed his child to remain at Eastbourne.

He could not, of course, have finally refused consent to a plan which might be the means of saving Bessie's life, and to be relieved of the cost of her support, receiving into the bargain a small monthly sum which Mrs.Ormonde represented as the value to her of Bessie's services at The Chestnuts, was a great consideration to a man in his perpetual state of struggle to make ends meet.

But he had a suspicion that Mrs.Ormonde desired to get the girl away from him that Bessie might be, as he would have phrased it, perverted to the debasing superstition of Christianity.
Mrs.Ormonde had interviews with him, and it helped her to understand the man.

She soon found out what it was that troubled him, and went directly to the point with an assurance that no attempt whatever should be made to prejudice Bessie against her father's views.

Any printed matter he chose to send her would be uninterfered with.