Star’s face was also very red, and she swallowed an angry sob as she turned to Miss Baker. “I am ready to sew,” was all that she could say. She longed to get some work into her hands, hoping thus to distract her thoughts from self and her bitter disappointment. The seamstress cut off the breadths of a skirt and gave them to her, pitying the pretty, yet despised, stranger from the bottom of her heart. “May I use the machine?” the young girl asked, glancing at that labor-saving instrument. “Do you know how?” “Yes’m.” “Very well. This is a Florence, and I will show you how to thread it.” “I know how, thank you. Mamma had a Florence, and I have often used it.” She arose, and going to it Miss Baker saw at once that she was fully capable of using it. All day long she stitched and sewed, working quietly, yet rapidly, and by night one dress was nearly completed. “You sew very nicely,” Miss Baker said, as she examined her work late in the afternoon, “and this print will make you a very neat dress. I wish Mrs. Richards would allow me to trim it, but she told me to make it plain. She is in a hurry about the other work.” Star said nothing to this, but after the seamstress had gone home, she cut and pieced together some dainty ruffles from some scraps that had been thrown aside; and all the long evening, while the family were down stairs entertaining visitors and making merry, she was sewing and finishing off the print dress, that she might have something fresh and clean for the morning. But she was, oh! so sad and lonely, and she could not help thinking of the previous night, when she had sat in the gay saloon of the steamer and chatted so sociably with Archibald Sherbrooke, and felt a strange thrill of happiness in sitting beside him. She had not been allowed to eat with the family during the day. She had not seen Mrs. Richards, and did not even know of how many members the household consisted. It was evident that she was to be ignored, except as her services were required, that she was to be made a drudge, and her proud young spirit resented it with all the strength of her nature. “I will never live so; I am above it. I am capable of better things, and I _will not_ consent to become a nonentity,” her heart kept saying, over and over again. But she was wholly dependent upon these people; her father had consigned her to their care. She had no money, save a letter of credit for a hundred pounds, the sum total realized from the sale of all the dear objects which she had been accustomed to see in her home since her infancy, and this she had been advised, by the lawyer whom Mr. Gladstone had chosen to settle his affairs, to consign to the care of Mr. Richards. But she had concluded since morning to say nothing about it to any one. She had no other friends; if she had possessed them she would have flown to them at once. She was a forlorn stranger among strangers, and she could see no way at present out of the difficulties surrounding her.