"Open the little trunk, Lydia, and take out my pearl-colored grenadine; I cannot wear a heavy silk to-night; and find my Valenciennes fichu and my small diamonds, I don't suppose there is any one in particular here, unless it is Lady Oakley, and she, I presume has the room opposite this. She did, the last time we were here. John, we are really very comfortable. Mrs. Smithers knows how to keep up an attractive house, and is a charming woman, though, of course, not quite to the manner born. Was her father an iron monger, or what?"
"He was a wholesale merchant, and worth a mint of money. Why, he could buy out every McPherson and Trevellian in the United Kingdom," was John's reply; and then, with a little toss of her head, Lady Jane began her toilet, for it wanted but an hour of dinner.
"There, that will do for me; I can finish the rest myself. And now go to Blanche's room and see to her and send Neil to me," she said to Lydia, when she was nearly dressed.
Lydia obeyed, and after she had gone, Lady Jane said to her husband:
"I hope Mrs. Smithers will not object to Blanche, even if she was not invited. I really could not leave her behind."
There was no reply from John, who was busy in the dressing-room, but a fresh young voice from the doorway answered her:
"I think it was downright cheeky to bring her without an invitation. With her giggling, and her reelys, and her yis-es—all she can say—and her white eyebrows and tow hair, she is not very ornamental, even if she has ten thousand a year."
The speaker was Neil McPherson, the boy who on the Fourth of July had been thrashed by Grey Jerrold for his sneer at the American flag, find his comments on American ladies. He was a year older than Grey, with a dark, handsome face, a pleasant smile, and winsome ways when he chose to be agreeable. As a rule, he was very good-natured, and his manners were perfect for a boy of fifteen; but there was in all he did or said an air of superiority, as if he felt himself quite above the majority of his companions, which, indeed, was the fact. Trained by his mother from infancy to consider the Trevellian blood the best in England outside the pale of royalty, and the McPherson blood the best outside the peerage, it was not strange that his good qualities—and he had many—should be warped, and dwarfed, and overshadowed by an indomitable pride and supreme selfishness, which would prompt him at any time to sacrifice his best friend in behalf of his own interest. And yet Neil was generally a favorite, for he was frank, and obliging, and good-humored, and very gentlemanly in his manner, and quick to render the little attentions so gratifying to the ladies, by whom he was held in high esteem as a pattern boy. He was the idol of his mother, who saw no fault in him whatever, and who had commenced already to plan for him a brilliant marriage, or at least a marriage of money, for her own income was not large, and that of her husband smaller still.
Blanche Trevellian, whom Neil had designated as tow-haired, and white-browed, was her grand-niece, and Neil's second cousin, and as heiress to ten thousand a year, she might develop into a desirable parti, notwithstanding her ordinary appearance now. And so, when the girl became an orphan, Lady Jane offered to take charge of her, and took her into the family as the daughter of the house, though she never encouraged Neil to think of her as a sister. She was his cousin Blanche, and entitled to a great deal of forbearance and respect, because of her money, and because her mother had been the granddaughter of a duke. Neil called her cousin Blanche, and quarreled with and teased her, and made fun of her white eyebrows, and said her feet were too big, and her ankles too small, and that on standing she always bent her knees to make herself look short; for she was very tall and angular, and awkward every way.
"Wait till my cousin Bessie grows up; there's a beauty for you," he had said to his mother on his return from Stoneleigh, where he had spent a few days the winter previous, and greatly to the annoyance of his mother, he talked constantly of the lovely child who had made so strong an impression upon him.
Lady Jane had heard much of Daisy's exploits, and as the stories concerning her were greatly exaggerated, she looked upon her, if not actually an abandoned woman, as one whose good name was hopelessly tarnished, and she never wished to see either her face or that of her child. Nor did she dream how near the enemy was to her; only just across the hall, in the room which she fully believed to be occupied by her friend, old Lady Oakley, from Grosvenor Square. When her husband and Neil went out, as they did soon after the latter had expressed himself with regard to Blanche and been sharply reproved, they left the door ajar, and she could hear the sound of footsteps in the room opposite, where Lady Oakley was supposed to be making her toilet, just as Lady Jane was making hers.
"I believe I will go and see her," she said to herself, when her dressing was completed and she found she had a good fifteen minutes before the dinner hour, and stepping across the hall she knocked at Daisy's door.
Daisy's first impulse was to call out, "Entrez!" as she did on the Continent; her second, to open the door herself, which she did, disclosing to the view of her astonished visitor, not a fat, red-faced dowager of seventy, but a wonderful vision of girlish loveliness, clad in simple muslin, with a mischievous twinkle in the blue eyes which met hers so fearlessly.
"I beg your pardon, miss," Lady Jane began, stammeringly: "I thought this was Lady Oakley's room. She is my friend. I hope you will excuse me," she continued, as she detected the smothered mirth in Daisy's eyes.
"There is nothing to excuse," Daisy began, in perfectly well-bred tones, "the mistake was natural. Lady Oakley did occupy this room, I believe, but she is now in the north wing, as Mrs. Smithers kindly gave this room to me so that I might be near you; that is, if, as I suppose, you are Lady Jane McPherson?" and she looked steadily at her visitor, who with a slight bridling of her long neck, bowed in the affirmative, never doubting that the young person before her was fully her equal, notwithstanding the plainness of her dress, every detail of which she took in at a glance and mentally pronounced perfect.
"Some poor earl's daughter whom Mrs. Smithers has found. She has a peculiar talent for making good acquaintances," she thought, just as Daisy offered her hand, which she involuntarily took, but dropped as if it had been a viper when the latter said:
"Then you are my aunt, or rather my husband's aunt, for I am Mrs. Archibald McPherson, and I am so glad to meet you."
Had a bomb-shell exploded at Lady Jane's feet and struck her in the face she could not have been more astonished. Stepping quickly back from this claimant to her notice, her face grew pale for an instant, and then flushed with anger, as she gasped:
"You, Mrs. Archibald McPherson! that—that—" she did not say what, but added, "What are you doing here?"
"Visiting Mrs. Smithers like yourself," Daisy replied, with imperturbable gravity. "We were together in Florence, where I was sick, and she was kind enough to like me, and she invited me to spend this month with her, so that I might meet Archie's relatives, whom she thought I ought to know, and Lady Oakley thinks so too. She came yesterday."
"Yes," Lady Jane kept repeating, as she retreated step by step till she stood in her own door, with her eyes still fixed upon Daisy, who fascinated her in spite of her deeply rooted prejudice, amounting almost to hatred.
The creature, as she designated her, was far prettier than she had supposed, and might pass for a lady with those who knew nothing of her antecedents—but then her reputation as a bold, fast woman! Would it be safe or right to allow Blanche, whom she designed for Neil, to remain under the same roof with such a person? was her first query. Still, if Mrs. Smithers, who was a power in the social world, notwithstanding her connection with trade, had taken her up, and Lady Oakley, too, perhaps it would be better not to make a scene and show her animosity too much. She could be barely civil to the woman and cut her visit short on one pretext or another. Thus deciding, she said:
"Meeting you so suddenly has surprised me very much, Mrs. McPherson. I hope your husband is well. I knew him when a boy. Perhaps he is in the drawing-room. I think I will go down, as it is nearly dinnertime," and bowing stiffly, she went down the stairs, every nerve quivering with insulted dignity, and not quite certain whether she heard a smothered laugh or not from the room, where Daisy was shaking with laughter at what she termed the old cat's discomfiture.
"Nasty thing!" she said "how she hates me, and how little I care! I hope I sha'n't let her spoil my fun. I have the inside track, and I mean to keep it!"
Thus deciding, she, too, started for the drawing-room, where the guests were assembling for dinner, and where Mrs. Smithers, who was by nature rather officious and anxious to right everything, was explaining to Lady Jane that she had invited Mr. and Mrs. Archibald McPherson to meet her, and was descanting upon the beauty and amiability of the latter, whom her ladyship was sure to like.
"A little too much of a coquette, perhaps," she said, "but so very pretty and piquant that she cannot help attracting admiration."
"Yes, I know—I have seen her. I made her acquaintance in the upper hall," Lady Jane answered, coldly, and this saved the embarrassment of an introduction when Daisy at last appeared, perfectly self-possessed and graceful, and looking, as Lady Jane unwillingly confessed to herself, as innocent as a Madonna.
Meanwhile Archie had sought his uncle, resolved to have the awkwardness of their first meeting over before any prying eyes were upon them. He found him alone, and, mustering all his courage, went up to him and offered his hand, as if nothing had ever occured to separate them.
John McPherson had heard from his host that his nephew was there, and was in a most perturbed state of mind, on his wife's account, rather than on his own. She would be very indignant, and perhaps do something rash, he feared, while, for himself he wanted to see the boy, whom he had always liked. It was while he was thinking thus that Archie came suddenly upon him. In his surprise, Mr. McPherson forgot everything except the young man standing so humbly before him, with a look on his face, and in his eyes, like the brother dead years ago, and who, when dying, had said, "Be kind to Archie."
Extending both hands to his nephew, he said:
"Archie, by Jove, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, though upon my word, you don't look so," and he glanced curiously, and with a sensation of pity, at the young man, who, though scarcely thirty-one, might have passed for forty, he was so pale and care worn, while his clothes were threadbare and shining in places, and hung upon him loosely. But at this cordial greeting, there was a wonderful transformation, and Archie's face grew almost boyish in its expression, and there was a moisture in his eyes as he took his uncle's hands and held them, while he answered the questions put to him so rapidly. Remembering at last that it was his duty to reprove his nephew a little, the Hon. John said to him:
"I have been very angry with you, for your hasty marriage was not what I could have wished. It has severed you from—us—from Lady Jane completely."
"Yes, I know," Archie replied. "I supposed you would not like it; but my marriage was for myself, and not for any one else."
"And it has proved all you could wish?" his uncle asked, regarding him steadily.
Archie's face was very red, and his lips were white, as he replied:
"Daisy was very young. We ought to have waited; but she is beautiful, and greatly admired."
"Umph! More's the pity!" John said. Then, after a moment's silence, he continued: "I say, Archie, how have you managed to live all these years? I hear of you everywhere I hope you have not resorted to the gaming-table?"
"Never!" came decidedly from Archie, "Do you think I would break my promise to my father? I have never touched a card, even for amusement, though I have wanted to so much, when I needed money sadly and saw how easily it was won at Monte Carlo."
"Your wife plays, though!" John said sharply; and Archie replied:
"I have nothing to say on that score, except that Daisy takes care of me. I should starve without her; for you know I was not brought up to work, and it is too late now to begin, though I believe I'd be willing to break stone on the highway, if I had the strength."
"Yes, yes, I see," the uncle interposed, a horrible dread seizing him lest his nephew might do something beneath a McPherson unless he was prevented.
"How much have you now?—how much money, I mean?"
"Just one shilling; and Daisy has, ten. If Mrs. Smithers had not invited us here, Heaven only knows what we should have done, for Daisy will not stay at Stoneleigh; so we travel from place to place, and she manages somehow," Archie said: and his uncle rejoined:
"And makes her name a by-word and a reproach, as I suppose you know."
"Daisy is my wife!" Archie replied, with a dignity for which his uncle menially respected him.
Just then the last dinner-bell rang, and rising from his seat, John put his hand first in his vest pocket and then into Archie's hand, where he left a twenty-pound note, saying rapidly:
"You needn't tell her—your wife I mean, or mine, either. A man may do as he likes occasionally."
They were walking toward the house, arm-in-arm, and Archie's step was lighter, and his face brighter and handsomer than it had been in many a day. Indeed, he was quite his old self as he entered the drawing room and greeted his august aunt, who received him more graciously than, she had his wife.
Just then Neil came in with Bessie, whom he took to his mother, saying:
"Look, mother, here is Bessie. Didn't I tell you she was a beauty?"
Then, as his mother merely inclined her head, he lifted the child in his arms and held her close to the proud lips which touched the white forehead coldly, while a frown darkened the lady's face, for notwithstanding that Bessie was so young and Neil a mere boy, she disapproved of the liking between them lest it should interfere with Blanche. But Neil did not fancy Blanche, and he did like Bessie, and took her in to dinner, holding her little hand while she skipped and jumped at his side and looked up in his face with those great blue eyes which moved him strangely now, and which in the after time were to bewilder and intoxicate and awaken in him all the better impulses of his nature and then become the sweetest and the saddest memory of his life.
"It is so nice to go to dinner with big people and have all you want to eat, isn't it?" she said to him, as she settled herself in her chair and adjusted her napkin with all the precision of a grown person.
"Of course it's nice," Neil replied, never dreaming what a real dinner was to this child who had so often dined on a bit of bread, a few shriveled grapes, a fig or two and some raisins, trying hard to keep her tears back when the bread was dry and scanty and she was very hungry.
She was very happy with Neil at her side, and she laughed and chatted with him and told him of Stoneleigh and the white rabbit old Anthony was rearing for him when he came at Christmas as he had promised to do.
Dinner being over, Archie, who did not smoke, excused himself from the gentlemen who did, and taking Bessie with him, sauntered off into the grounds till he reached the seat where he had found his uncle. Sitting down upon it and taking Bessie in his lap he told her of his good fortune and showed her the bank-note.
"Oh, I am so glad!" the child exclaimed; "for now we are real, and not impostors, are we?"
"Not in the sense of not having any money," he replied, but there was a sad, anxious expression on his face, as he looked down upon the little girl beside him, and thought of the future and what it might bring to her.
"Bessie," he said, at last, "how would you like to live at Stoneleigh altogether, and not be traveling about?"
"Oh, I'd like it so much," Bessie said, "but I am afraid mamma would not. She hates Stoneleigh, it's so dull."
"But you and I might live there. You would be my little housekeeper and I could teach you your lessons," Archie said, conjuring up in his mind a vision of a quiet home with Bessie as his companion.
If Daisy did not choose to stay with him she could go and come as she liked, he thought, and then and there he decided that his wandering life was at an end.
The next day the party at Penrhyn Park was increased by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Jerrold from Boston: "very nice Americans, especially the lady, who might pass for an Englishwoman," Mrs. Smithers informed her guests.
"Yes, I know them, or rather I know their son Grey, the young cub who thrashed me so last Fourth of July when we were at Melrose," Neil exclaimed; "but he's not a bad fellow after all, and we grew to be good friends, I hope he is coming, too."
But Grey did not come, as the reader will remember, for his mother made it a kind of punishment for his quarrel with Neil, that he should remain in London while she visited at Penrhyn Park, where she met with Lady Jane McPherson, whom she admired greatly, and with Daisy, whom she detested for the bold coquetry, which manifested itself so plainly after the arrival of Lord Hardy, that even Mrs. Smithers' sense of propriety was shocked, and she began to look forward with pleasure to the day when her house would be freed from the presence of this lady.
The month of August was the limit of the visit, and Daisy would have gone then had there been any place to go to except Stoneleigh. But there was not; no friendly door was open to her. She could not return to London, and she would not go to Stoneleigh: so, she resolved to remain where she was until Lord Hardy returned to his country seat in Ireland, and then she would go there and take Archie and Bessie with her.
To carry out this purpose she began suddenly to droop and affect a languor and weakness she was far from feeling, for she had really never been better in her life, and Archie knew it, and watched her with dismay as she enacted the role of the interesting invalid to perfection. A little hacking cough came on, with a pain in her side, and finally, to Mrs. Smithers' horror, she took to her bed the last week in August, unable to sit up, but overwhelmed with grief at her inability to travel, and fear lest she should be a burden upon her hostess, and outstay her welcome.
Never dreaming that it was a farce to gain time, Mrs. Smithers made the best of it, and saw guest after guest depart, until only the Welsh McPhersons remained, and she was longing to get away herself to the north of Scotland, where she was due the middle of September. Fortunately Lord Hardy went home sooner than he had intended, and wrote to Daisy and her husband that his house was ready for them, and then the invalid recovered her strength rapidly, and was able in three days to leave Penrhyn Park, and travel to Ireland with Archie, who had fought hard to return to Stoneleigh and begin the new life he had resolved upon. But Daisy knew better than to go to Hardy Manor without him, and she persuaded him to go with her and then to Paris, from which place she made a flying visit to Monte Carlo, where she met with such success that she did not greatly object to spending the holidays at Stoneleigh, whither they went just before Christmas.
It was at this time that Archie received his aunt's letter offering to take little Bessie and bring her up as a sensible, useful woman. For a moment Archie's heart leaped into his throat as he thought of emancipating his child from the baneful influence around her, but when he remembered how desolate he should be without her, he said:
"I cannot let her go."
Upon one point, however, he was still resolved; he would remain at Stoneleigh and keep Bessie with him. Nothing could change that decision. Daisy would of course go where she pleased. He could not restrain her, and as many Englishwomen did travel alone on the Continent, she might escape remark in that respect, and be no more talked about than if he were with her. At first Daisy objected to this plan. It was necessary for her to earn their living, she said, and the least Archie could do was to give the support of his presence. But Archie was firm, and when in February Daisy started again on her trip, which had for its destination Monte Carlo and Genoa, Archie was left behind with his twenty-pound note, which he had not yet touched, and with Bessie as his only companion.
Seven years, and from a lovely child of eight years old Bessie McPherson had grown to a wonderfully beautiful girl of fifteen, whose face once seen could never be forgotten, it was so sweet, and pure, and refined, and yet so sad in its expression at times, as if she carried some burden heavier than the care of her father, who was fast sinking into a state of confirmed invalidism, and to whom she devoted all the freshness of her young life, with no thought for herself or her own comfort. And there was a shadow on the girl's life; a burden of shame and regret for the silly, frivolous mother, who spent so little time at home, but who flitted from place to place on the Continent, not always in the best of company but managing generally to hang on to some old dowager either English, French, or German, and so cover herself with an appearance of respectability. Sometimes Lord Hardy was with her, and sometimes he was not, for as he grew older and knew her better, he began to weary of her a very little. Just now he was in Egypt, and before he started he sent her a receipt in full for all her indebtedness to him for borrowed money which he knew she could never pay. And Daisy had written to her husband that the debt was paid, and had given him to understand that a stroke of unparalleled success had enabled her to do it. When her mother died two years before, and left a few hundreds to her daughter, Archie had urged the necessity of sending the whole to young Hardy, but Daisy had refused and spent it for herself. Now, however, it was paid, and he was glad, and quite content with his uneventful life, even though, it was a life of the closest economy and self-denial for himself and Bessie.
When Daisy had plenty she divided with the household at Stoneleigh, and when she had little she kept it for herself, and Archie and Bessie shifted for themselves—or rather the latter did, and was sometimes almost as hungry as she had been when she ate the dry bread and shriveled grapes on the fifth floor back of some large hotel.
Bessie understood perfectly her mother's mode of life, and knew that though she was not degraded in the worst sense of the word, she was an adventuress and a gambler, whom good, pure women shunned, and over whom she mourned as a mother mourns for the child which has gone astray. And yet Bessie's life was a comparatively happy one, for she had her father, and she had Neil, her cousin, the handsome and spirited boy from Eton, and later the dashing student from Oxford, who came sometimes to Stoneleigh and made the place like heaven to the young girl blooming there unseen and unknown to the great world outside, and Bessie hoped to see him soon, for she was going with her father to London, where she had never been since she was a child, and of which she did not remember much. This journey had cost Bessie a great deal of anxiety and planning as to how they could afford it; but by saving a little here and there, and by extra self-denials on her part, sufficient money for the journey, and for a week in town, was raised at last, and the trip decided upon. Bessie would have liked a new dress and hat for herself, and a new coat for her father, but these were out of the question, so she brushed and cleaned her father's three-year-old coat, and washed and ironed her two-year-old Holland linen, freshened up a blue ribbon for her last year's hat, mended her gloves, put plenty of clean collars, and cuffs, and handkerchiefs, in her bag, borrowed Dorothy's umbrella, and was ready to start on her journey without a thought that she might look a little old-fashioned and countrified in the gay city. They found some cheap lodgings in the vicinity of High street, Kensington, and then she sent her card to Neil, who came at once, and tried to be gay, and appear as usual, but she felt that he was ill at ease, and the old hair cloth sofa and chairs looked shabbier than ever to her, when she saw his critical eyes upon them, and felt how out of place he was in that humble room, with his fashionable dress and town-bred air of elegance and luxury.
"I say, Dot, why in the name of wonder did you stumble into such a hole as this? Could you find no better lodgings than these in all London?" he said to her at last.
"Yes, Neil," she replied, "we could find lodgings fit for the queen, but then we have not the queen's income, and these rooms are so cheap—only a pound a week, and the kitchen fire included, I know they are not pretty, but they are very clean and quiet, and Mrs. Buncher is so kind."
Bessie tried to speak naturally, but there was a tremor in her voice, and the tears came to her great blue eyes as she looked up at her cousin. Neil saw the tears, and stooping over her he kissed the quivering lips, and stroking the glossy hair, said to her:
"Never mind, Bess, your face makes everything lovely, and this dingy parlor with you in it is pleasanter to me than the finest drawing-room in Grosvenor Square. But you ought not to be here, you and your father. You should be at Trevellian House, as our guests, and if I owned it you should; but there's a lot of old pokes staying there now, friends of Blanche—Lord and Lady Somebody, Mother is great on the titles, you know."
"Yes, I know," Bessie said, slowly; then, after a moment, she added: "I should like to see your mother and Miss Trevellian. I was too young at Penrhyn Park to remember much about them. Do you think they will call?"
Neil knew they would not, and he could scarcely repress a smile as he fancied the McPherson carriage, with his mother and Blanche, driving up before that shabby house, but he said:
"Perhaps so, though they are always so busy during the season; but I'll tell you how you can see them. Go to the park to-morrow afternoon about five o'clock. They are sure to be there in their gorgeous attire, and Blanche will have her poodle-dog."
"Shall you be there?" Bessie asked, and Neil replied:
"Yes, possibly," while to himself he thought that he should not, for how could he ride by with the gay throng and know that Bessie was sitting in a hired chair watching for him, and most likely making some demonstration which would draw attention to her?
"I may, and I may not," he continued: "but it will make no difference; you will see Blanche with her poodle and her red parasol, and you will see the princess, if you are there about half past five or six, but for Heaven's sake don't rush forward like an idiot, as so many do, especially Americans and people from the country: it stamps you at once as a greenhorn."
"No, I won't," Bessie said, humbly, for something in Neil's tone hurt her; then, as she saw him consulting his watch, she said: "Oh, Neil, can't I walk with you just a little way? Father never goes out after tea, and I do so long for some fresh air."
Neil looked at his watch again. It was almost six, and at seven there was a grand dinner at Trevellian house, at which he was expected to be present. But Bessie's blue eyes and eager face drove everything else from his mind, and he was soon walking with her in the lovely Kensington gardens, and her hand was on his arm, and his hand was on hers, and in watching her bright face and listening to her quaint remarks, he forgot how fast the minutes were going by, and the grand dinner at home waited for him a quarter of an hour, and then the guests sat down without him and Lady Jane's face wore a dark, stormy look, when the son of the house appeared smiling, handsome, and gracious, and apologizing for his tardiness by saying frankly that he was in the garden, and forgot the lapse of time.
"You must have been greatly interested. You could not have been alone," Blanche said to him in an undertone.
"No, I was not alone," he replied, with great frankness. "I was with the prettiest girl in London, or out of it, either."
"And pray who may she be?" Blanche asked.
"My cousin Bessie. She arrived yesterday," was Neil's reply.
"Oh!" and Blanche's face flushed with annoyance.
She remembered the beautiful child at Penrhyn Park, and had heard her name so often since, that the mere mention of it was obnoxious to her, and she was silent and sulky all through the long dinner, which lasted until nine o'clock. When it was over, and the guests were gone. Lady Jane turned fiercely upon her son and asked what had kept him so late.
"Cousin Bessie," he answered, "She is in the city with her father, at No. —— Abingdon road, and I wish you would call upon them. They really ought to be staying here, our own blood relations as they are."
"Staying here? Not if I know myself. Is that detestable gambling woman with them?" Lady Jane replied, with ineffable scorn.
"No," Neil answered her. "She is never with them, and Bessie is no more like her than you are. She is the purest, and sweetest and best girl I ever knew, and I do not think it would hurt you or Blanche either to pay her some attention;" and having said so much, the young man left the room in time to escape Blanche's tears and his mother's anger and reproaches.
The next day Neil was in a penitent frame of mind, for, however much he might laugh at Blanche and her light eyebrows, and ridicule his mother's plans for him in that quarter, he was not at all indifferent to the ten thousand a year, and might perhaps wish to have it. Consequently he must not drive Blanche too far, for she had a temper and a will, and there was another cousin one degree further removed than himself, a good-natured, good-looking and highly-aristocratic Jack Trevellian, who was thirty years old, and a great favorite in the best society which London afforded, and who, if a great-uncle and two cousins were to die without heirs, would become Sir Jack, and who, it was thought, had an eye on the ten thousand a year. So Neil was very gracious, and sugared Blanche's strawberries for her at breakfast, and read to her after breakfast, and staid at home to lunch, and never mentioned Bessie, or hinted that he would much rather be sitting with her on the old hair-cloth sofa in Mrs. Buncher's parlor than in that elegantly furnished boudoir, and when the hour for driving came, and his mother complained of a headache, and asked him to go with Blanche, he consented readily, but suggested that she leave her poodle at home, as one puppy was enough for her, he said.
And so about five o'clock the McPherson carriage drove into the park near Apsley House, and in it sat Miss Blanche, gorgeous in light-blue silk and white lace hat, with large solitaires in her ears, her red parasol held airily over her head and her insipid face wreathed in smiles, as she talked to her companion, the handsome Neil, whose dark face was such a contrast to her own, and who reclined indolently at her side, answering her questions mechanically, but thinking always of Bessie, and wondering if she were there in the hired chair, and if she would see him, or, what was more to the purpose, if he should see her among the multitude which thronged the park that afternoon.
Bessie was there, and had been for more than an hour, sitting with her father near one of the entrances from Piccadilly, and wholly unconscious of the attention she was attracting with her beautiful, fresh young face, her animated gestures and eager remarks to her father as she watched the passers-by, and wondered who was who, and wished Neil was there to tell her.
"I'd like to see a real duchess, and not mistake a barmaid for one," she said; and then a pleasant-looking man, who was standing near, and had heard her remarks, came up to her, and lifting his hat politely said to Archie;
"If you will permit me, sir, I will tell the young lady who the people are. I know most of them."
"Oh, thank you; I shall be so glad if you will," Bessie replied. "You see, father and I are right from Wales, and it is all quite new to us."
"Then you were never here before?" the stranger asked, looking down upon her with an undisguised admiration, which yet had nothing impertinent in it.
"Yes, years ago, when I was a mere child, and did not care for things. Now I want to see everybody—lords, and earls, and dukes, and deans, and prime ministers, and everybody. Do you know them?"
"Yes, most of them, by sight," the stranger said slowly, and taking his stand where he could see her as well as the passers-by, he told her this was a lord, and this was Disraeli, and this a grand lady of fashion, and this a famous beauty, and this a duchess, and that Prince Leopold.
It was a fortunate afternoon Bessie had chosen, for everybody was one in the early June sunshine, and she enjoyed it immensely, and said out what she thought; that titled ladies and grand dames were very ordinary looking people after all, and that the fat old dowager who rode in a coach and four, with powdered footman behind, and a face as red as a beet, was coarse as any fish-woman and that old Dorothy would have looked better on the satin cushions than this representative of English aristocracy.
"I wonder what you would think of the queen," the stranger said; but before Bessie could reply, there was a sudden murmur among the crowd, and a buzz of expectancy, and then the princess appeared in view, riding slowly, and bowing graciously to the right and to the left.
Instantly there was a rush to the front, and Bessie half rose to go, too; but remembering what Neil had said about not making herself an idiot, as the Americans and country people did, she resumed her seat, and the country people and the Americans stood in her way and all she saw of the princess was her sloping shoulders and long, slender neck, with the lace scarf tied high about it. It was too bad, and Bessie could scarcely keep back her tears of disappointment, and was wishing she had disregarded Neil's orders and been an idiot, when a handsome open carriage came in sight, drawn by two splendid bays, and in it sat Blanche Trevellian, with her red parasol over her head, and beside her Neil McPherson, eagerly scanning the crowd in quest of the little girl, the very thought of whom made his heart beat as Blanche had never made it beat in all her life.
"There they come! That's he! that's Neil, my cousin," Bessie exclaimed, and forgetting all the proprieties in her excitement, she rose so quickly that her hat fell from her head and hung down her back, as she went forward three or four steps and waved her handkerchief.
Neil saw her, as did Blanche and many others, and a frown darkened his face at this unlooked-for demonstration. Still he was struck with the wonderful picture she made, with her strikingly beautiful face lit up with excitement, and her bright, wavy hair gleaming in the sunlight, us she stood with uncovered head waving to him, the fashionable Neil McPherson, whom so many knew. His first impulse, naturally, was to lift his hat in token of recognition, but something in his meaner nature prompted him to take no notice, until Blanche said, in her most supercilious tone:
"Who was that brazen-faced girl? Your cousin Bessie?"
"Yes, my cousin Bessie," Neil replied, and turned to make the bow he should have made before.
But Bessie had disappeared, and was sitting again by her father, adjusting her hat and hating herself for having been so foolish.
"Neil was angry, I know. I saw it in his face, and I was an idiot," she thought, just as the stranger, who had watched the proceeding with a highly amused expression around the corners of his mouth, said to her:
"You know Neil McPherson, then? You called him your cousin."
"Yes," Bessie answered, a little proud of the relationship, "Neil is my cousin, or rather the cousin of my father, who is Mr. Archibald McPherson, from Bangor, Wales."
She meant to show her companion how respectable she was, even if her dress, which she was sure he had inspected critically, was poor and out of date, and she was not prepared for his sudden start, as he repeated:
"Mr. Archibald McPherson, of Bangor! Then you are the daughter of that—" he checked himself, and added, "I have met your mother at Monte Carlo," and he drew back a step or two, as if he feared that something of the mother's character might have communicated itself to the daughter. And Bessie saw the movement, and the change of expression on his face, and her cheeks were scarlet with shame, but she lifted her clear blue eyes fearlessly to his, and said:
"Yes, mother is a monomaniac on the subject of play. It is a species of insanity, I think."
Her voice shook a little, and about her mouth there settled the grieved, sorry look which touched the stranger at once, and coming close to her again, he said:
"Your mother is a very beautiful woman. I think she has the loveliest face I ever saw, with one exception," and he looked straight at the young girl whom he had wounded, hoping this implied compliment might atone.
But if Bessie heard or understood him she made no sign, and sat with her hands locked tightly together and her eyes looking far away across the sea of heads and the rapidly moving line of carriages.
This man knew her mother at her worst—not sweet, loving and kind as she was sometimes at Stoneleigh, but as a gambler, an adventuress, a woman of whom men jested and made sport—a woman who had probably ensured and fleeced him, as Neil would have expressed it. Bessie knew all the miserable catalogue of expedients resorted to by her mother to extort money from her victims; cards, chess, bets, philopenas, loans she never intended to pay, and which she accepted as gifts the instant the offer was made, and when these failed, pitiful tales of scanty means and pressing needs, an invalid husband at home, and a daughter who must be supported.
She knew the whole, for she had seen a letter to her father written by Lady Jane, who stated the case in plain language, and, denouncing Daisy as a disgrace to the McPherson family, asked that Archie should exercise his marital authority and keep his wife at home.
This letter had hurt Bessie cruelly, and when next her mother came to Stoneleigh she had begged of her to give up the life she was leading, and stay in her own home.
"And so all starve together," Daisy had answered her. "Do you know, child, that you would not have enough to eat or wear, if it were not for me? Your father has never earned a shilling in his life, and never will. It is not in him. We are owing everybody, and somebody must work. If I am that somebody, I choose to do it in my own way, and I am not the highly demoralized female Lady Jane thinks me to be. Her bosom friend, old Lady Oakley, plays at Monte Carlo, and so do many high-bred English dames, and Americans, too, for that matter. I am no worse than scores of women, except that I am poor and play from necessity, while they do it for pastime. I have never been false to your father; no man has ever insulted me that way, or ever will. If he did, I would shoot him as I would a dog. I cannot help being pretty any more than you; I cannot sew myself up in a bag, and shall not try to catch the small-pox, so do not worry me again with this sickly sentiment about respectability, and the duties of a wife. I know my own business, and can protect my own reputation."
After this there was nothing more to be said. Daisy went back to her profession, and Bessie took up the old life again with an added burden of care and anxiety, and with a resolve that she would use for herself personally just as little as possible of the money her mother sent them. Often and often had she speculated upon and tried to fancy the class of men her mother associated with, and whom Lady Jane called her victims, and now here was one beside her, speaking and acting like a gentleman, and she felt her blood tingle with bitter shame and humiliation. Had her mother fleeced him, she wondered, and at last, lifting her sad eyes to his face, she said:
"Do you know my mother well? Did you ever—play with her?"
"Yes, often," he replied; "side by side at rouge et noir, and at cards and chess where she is sure to beat. She bears a charmed hand, I think, or she would not be so successful."
He had lost money by her then, and Bessie at once found herself thinking that if she only knew how much, and who he was, she would pay it back pound for pound when she made a fortune.
In a vague kind of way she entertained a belief that somewhere in the world there was a fortune awaiting her; that little girl of fifteen summers, who sat there in Hyde Park, in her old washed linen dress and faded ribbons, with such a keen sense of pain in her heart for the mother who bore her, and pity for herself and her father. The latter had paid but little intention to what she was saying to her companion, for when he was not engrossed in the passers-by he had been half asleep, but when he caught the names rouge et noir and cards, he roused up and said:
"Sir, my daughter has never played for money in her life, and never will."
"I am sure she will not," the stranger rejoined, "though many highly respectable ladies do;" then, as if he wished to chance the subject, he turned to Bessie and said: "If Neil McPherson is your cousin there ought to be some relationship between you and me, for he is my cousin, too."
"Yours?" Bessie asked, in some surprise, and he replied:
"Yes, my father and his mother were cousins. I am Jack Trevellian. You have probably heard him speak of me."
"No," Bessie replied, with a decided shake of her head, which told plainly that neither from Neil nor any one else had she ever heard of Jack Trevellian, who felt a little chagrined that he, the man of fashion, whose name was so familiar in all the higher circles of London, should be wholly unknown to this girl from Wales.
Truly, she had much to learn. But she did not seem at all impressed now, or embarrassed either, though she looked at him more closely and decided that he resembled Neil, but was not nearly so good-looking, and that he was awfully old.
"You know my cousin Blanche, of course," he said to her next. "You must have seen her when you visited at Neil's father's."
"I saw her at Penrhyn Park when I was a child, but not since then until this afternoon. I was never at Trevellian House," Bessie said, and with the mental decision: "Poor relations who are outside the ring," Jack Trevellian continued:
"She is not a beauty, though a great heiress. Rumor says Neil is engaged to her."
"Neil engaged! No, he isn't. He would have told me; he tells me everything; he is not engaged," Bessie said, quickly, while a keen sense of pain thrilled every nerve as she thought what it would be to lose Neil as he would be lost if he married the proud Blanche.
He was so much to her; something more than a brother, something less than a lover, for she was too young to think of such an ending to her friendship for him, and her heart beat rapidly and her lips quivered as she arose on the instant to go.
"Come, father, I think we have staid long enough. You must be tired," she said to her father; then turning to Jack, who was thinking: "Is the child in love with Neil? What a pity!" she said to him: "Thank you, Mr. Trevellian, for telling me who the people were. It was very kind in you. I will tell Neil I met you. Good-by," and she gave him her ungloved hand, which, though small and plump and well formed, showed that it was not a stranger to work.
Dishwashing, sweeping, dusting, bed making, and many other more menial things it had done at intervals to save old Dorothy, the only female domestic at Stoneleigh. But it was a very pretty hand for all that, and Jack Trevellian felt a great desire to squeeze it as it lay in his broad palm. But he did not, for something in Bessie's eyes forbade anything like liberty with her, and he merely said:
"I was very glad to tell you. I wish I could do something more for you while you stay in London. Perhaps you will let me call upon you—with Neil," he added, as he saw a flush in Bessie's face.
She was thinking of the old hair cloth furniture, and the room which Neil designated a hole, and which Jack Trevellian might wonder at and despise. Such men as he had nothing in common with Mrs. Buncher's lodgings, and she said to him, as she withdrew her hand and put on her mended gloves:
"You had better not; father and I are out so much that we might not be home, and you would have your trouble for nothing. Good-by again."
She took her father's arm and walked away, while Jack Trevellian stood looking after her and thinking to himself:
"That girl has the loveliest face I ever saw. It is so full of sweetness, and patience, and pathos, that you want to take her in your arms and pity her, and make much of her, as a child who has been hurt and wants soothing. She is even prettier than Flossie. By Jove, if the coronet were mine, and the money, I'd make that girl my lady as sure as my name is Jack. Lady Bessie Trevellian! It sounds well, and what a sensation she would make in society. But what a mother-in-law for a man to be saddled with. Welsh Daisy! Bah!" and with thoughts not very complimentary to Daisy, he left the park and walked rapidly along Piccadilly toward Grosvenor Square and Trevellian House.
Meanwhile Neil was driving on in no very enviable frame of mind. Bessie's startling demonstration had annoyed him more than he liked to confess. Why had she made such a spectacle of herself? and how oddly she had looked standing there in that old linen gown with her hat hanging down her back—and such a hat! He had noticed it in the gardens and thought it quite out of style, and had even detected that the ribbons had been ironed! But he did not think as much about it, or her gown either, when he was alone with her, as he did now when there was all his world to see and Blanche to criticise, as she did unsparingly.
"I thought you once told me she was very pretty," she said: "but I think her a fright in that dowdy dress, and bare-headed, too! Did it to show her hair, no doubt! There is probably some of her mother's nature in her."
Neil could have sworn, he was so angry with Blanche and with all the world, especially Bessie, who had got him into this mess. He tried to make himself believe that he had intended to take Bessie and her father for a drive in the park, but he should not do it now. Probably the linen gown was the only one Bessie had brought with her, and the elegant Neil McPherson, who thought so much of one's personal appearance and what Mrs. Grundy would say, could not face the crowd with that gown at his side, even if Bessie were in it. She would never know it, perhaps, but she had lost her chances with Neil, who nevertheless, hated himself for his foolish pride, and when the drive, which he shortened as much as possible, was over, he left Blanche to go home alone, and taking a cab drove straight to Oxford street and bought a lovely navy-blue silk and a pretty chip hat, with a wreath of eglantines around it. These he ordered sent to Bessie, at No. —— Abingdon road, and then, feeling that he was a pretty good fellow after all, he started for home, where to his surprise, he found his cousin Jack.
"Why, Jack!" he exclaimed; "I thought you were in Ireland! When did you return?"
"This morning; and, as you see, have lost no time in paying my respects to you all," Jack answered, as he rose from his seat by Blanche and went forward, with his easy, patronizing manner, which always exasperated Neil; it had in it such an air of superiority over him, as if he were a mere boy, to be noticed and made much of.
There was always a show of friendship between these two, but no genuine liking. Still, they were now very gracious to each other, and talked together until dinner was announced, when Jack offered his arm to Blanche, to whom he devoted himself so assiduously that Neil was jealous at once, even though for Blanche herself he did not care a penny. And he knew Jack did not either, except as she was surrounded by the golden halo of ten thousand a year. Neil had not made up his mind whether he wanted that ten thousand with the incumbrance, or not; but he certainly did not want Jack to get it, and his brow grew cloudy, and he became very silent, until Jack startled him by saying:
"By the way, Neil, why have you never told me of that pretty little wild blossom hidden away in Wales?"
"Whom do you mean?" Neil asked savagely; and Jack replied:
"I mean your cousin Bessie. I stumbled upon her and her father in the park this afternoon, and told them who some of the people were. I was standing by Miss McPherson's chair when you drove by—"
"And she made that rush at Neil as if she had been a mad thing; it was too absurd!" Blanche chimed in, and turning to Lady Jane, she described the scene with great minuteness of detail. "It was really too ridiculous, to see her standing there waving her handkerchief with her head bare to show her abundant hair, and that old linen gown, which must have seen some years' service. I was intensely mortified to have our friends see her, and so was Neil."
"I beg your pardon, I was not mortified at all; I liked it, and I do not care who saw her," Neil said, rousing up in defense of Bessie, and lying easily and fluently, for Blanche's cruel remarks made him very angry.
"Oh, you did like it, then? Your face told a different story," Blanche retorted; while Lady Jane, forgetting her dignity, commenced a tirade against both Bessie and her mother, the latter of whom she cordially despised. Of the girl she knew nothing, she said, but it was fair to suppose she was like her mother, and she did not blame Blanche for feeling shocked at such unmaidenly advances in public to a young man.
Had Neil been a few years younger he would have called his mother a fool, as he had done more than once in his boyhood; but he could not do that now, and turning to Jack, who had been quietly eating his dinner, he said:
"Jack, what did you think of Bessie? Is she a bold hussy, and ought Blanche to smash her red parasol because Bessie's eyes have rested upon it?"
Thus appealed to, Jack looked up, with an amused smile on his face, and said:
"I don't quite believe Bessie's eyes did rest on Blanche's parasol. I thought they were on you, and envied you as a lucky dog. Seriously, though," he continued, as he saw the thunderous gleam in Neil's eyes, and the look of triumph in Blanche's, "it did not occur to me that there was anything bold or unmaidenly in what the young lady did, and I never saw a more beautiful tableau than she made, standing there in the sunshine, with her bright, wavy hair, and her lovely, eager face. She is very beautiful, and I am so glad I have seen her. They are stopping at—" He hesitated, and looked at Neil, who, grateful for his defense of Bessie, unhesitatingly replied:
"No. —— Abingdon road, near High street"
"Thank you," Jack said, making a mental memorandum of the place, with a view to call, even if Bessie had said he better not.
After this little skirmish the dinner proceeded in peace, so far as Bessie was concerned, for Jack Trevellian was a kind of oracle, whose verdict could raise one to the pinnacle of public opinion, or cast him down to the depths, and if he said Bessie was not bold, nor brazen-faced, then she was not, though Lady Jane and Blanche disliked her just the same.
Neil, on the contrary, forgave her fully for the annoyance he had felt, and immediately after breakfast the next morning he started for Mrs. Buncher's. Bessie was trying on the hat when he entered. She had received the box only a few moments before, and had readily guessed that Neil was the donor, and had in part divined his motive.
"He was ashamed of my old gown and hat; and they are rather the worse for the wear, and looked very shabby among the fine dresses in the park. But they are the best I have, unless I make over those mother sent me—and that I cannot do," she thought, as she remembered, with a pang, the trunkful of half-worn garments of various kinds, which her mother had sent her from time to time, and which she could never bring herself to wear, because of the association. They had been worn in the moral mire of Monte Carlo and other places equally disreputable, and Bessie could no more have put them on than she could have adopted her mother's habits. In her linen dress, which she bought with money paid her for roses by the ladies who frequented the "George," she felt pure and respectable. But this gift from Neil, her cousin, she surely might keep, for her father said so, and, young-girl-like, she was admiring herself, or rather the hat, before the glass, when Neil himself came in.
"Hallo, Dot," he said, coming quickly to her side. "At it, I see, like the rest of your kind; but don't it become you, though! Why, you are sweet and fresh this morning as a rose from the old Stoneleigh garden," and the tall young man stooped and kissed the blushing girl two or three times before she could withdraw herself from him. "Why, Bess," he continued, "what a lump of dignity you are this morning! You did not used to wriggle so when I kissed you. What has happened?"
"Nothing has happened," Bessie replied, though she knew very well there had, for what Jack Trevellian had told her that rumor said of Neil and Blanche had opened a new channel of thought, and made her older far than she was before; too old for Neil to be kissing her as if she were a child.
And then, if what Jack said was true, he had no right to kiss her, even if she were his cousin. But was it true? She wished she knew, and after she had thanked Neil for the dress, and asked if he were very angry with her the day before for trying to attract his attention, and he had assured her that he was not, she burst out:
"Oh, Neil, is it true you are to marry Miss Blanche? Mr. Jack Trevellian stood by us yesterday and told me who the people were, and he said—"
"Jack be hanged!" Neil interrupted her. "What business has he to talk such nonsense to you? Marry Blanche? Never! What do I want of those light eyebrows and that pointed chin—I, who know you?"
Here he stopped, struck by something in Bessie's face which seemed to brighten and beautify it until it shone like the face of some pure saint to whom the gate of Paradise has just been opened. Then it occurred to Neil suddenly that Bessie was not a child. She was a girl of fifteen and more, with an experience which made her older than her years; and, selfish as he was, and much as he would like to have her look at him always as she was looking now, he felt that he must not encourage it. He had told her he should never marry Blanche, but in his heart he thought it possible, for, as there was no money in his own family, and he could not exist without it, he must marry money and forget the sweet face and soft blue eyes which moved him with a strange power and made him long to fold Bessie in his arms, and, young as she was, claim her as something more than a cousin. But, always politic and cautious, he restrained himself, and said to her instead:
"I do not believe I shall ever marry anybody, certainly not for many years, and you and I will be the best of friends always, brother and sister, which is better than cousins. Do you consent?"
"Yes," Bessie answered, falteringly, not quite understanding him, or knowing whether she should like the brother and sister arrangement as well as the cousin.
Then they talked together of what Bessie had seen in the park, and she told him all Jack Trevellian had said, and how kind he was, and how much she liked him, until Neil felt horribly jealous of his cousin, and wished he had staid in Ireland while Bessie was in London.
"Oh, it must be so fine to drive in a handsome carriage with the crowd. I wish I could try it. Does it cost so very much?" she asked, and Neil detested himself because he did not at once offer to take her and her father for the coveted drive.
"Could he do it?" he asked himself many times, deciding finally that he could not face his fashionable friends, and, more than all, his mother and Blanche, with these country cousins—Archie, in his threadbare coat, and Bessie, in her linen gown, with the big puffs at the top of the sleeves.
Had she been less beautiful he might venture it, but everybody would look at that face and turn to look again, and wonder who she was, and question him about her.
No, he couldn't do it, and so he went away at last, deciding to take the underground road to St. James Park, and meeting, as he was entering the station, Jack Trevellian coming out.
"Hallo, Hallo!" was said by each to the other, while both looked a little conscious, and Neil burst out, impulsively, "I say, Jack, what brings you over here?"
"The same which brought you, I dare say," Jack replied. "I am going to call upon your cousin."
"The deuce you are! I thought so," Neil answered, in a tone of voice indicative of anything but pleasure.
"Have you any objections?" Jack asked, and Neil replied:
"No—yes. Jack. You are as good—yes, better than most of the fellows in our set, but—" He hesitated, and Jack rejoined:
"But what? Go on."
"By Jove, I will speak out!" Neil continued, going close to his cousin. "You are a man of the world, accustomed to all sorts of girls—girls who laugh and flirt and let you make soft speeches to them and never think of you again because they know you mean nothing. But Bessie is not that kind; she is innocent and pure as a baby, and believes all you say, and—and—by George, Jack, if you harm a hair of her head I'll beat you into a pomace! You understand?"
"Yes, I rather think I do," Jack answered, with a smile; "and, Neil, you are more of a man than I supposed; upon my soul you are; but never fear, I will not flirt with Bessie, I will not make love to her, unless—I fall in love myself, in which case I cannot promise; but don't distress yourself. The Welsh rose is as safe with me as with you. Good-morning!" and so saying, he walked off in the direction of Abingdon road, while Neil rather unwillingly bought his ticket and went through the narrow way and down the stairs to wait for the incoming train.
Mrs. Buncher had made an effort to brighten up her dingy parlor since her new lodgers took possession of it. She had washed the windows and put up clean muslin curtains, and a white towel on the small table, which was further ornamented by a bowl of lovely roses, which filled the room with perfume and seemed to harmonize so perfectly with the fair young girl sitting near the table and darning what would soon have been a hole in the elbow of her father's coat. She had discovered it that morning, and as soon as Neil left her sat down to her task, with her pretty white apron partially covering her linen dress and greatly improving her appearance. Bessie always wore aprons in the morning at home, though Neil had more than once objected to it, as he said such things belonged to housemaids and not to ladies.
"And I am the housemaid; I wash the dishes and lay the cloth and sweep and dust, and an apron keeps my dress clean," Bessie had answered him, laughingly, and when she came to London she brought her best apron with her, and after Neil was gone put it on and commenced her task of darning.
"Oh, if you could have a new coat; this is so worn and threadbare," she said to her father, who was sitting near her in his dressing-gown. "I wish Neil had sent you a coat instead of that dress to me. I do wish we were rich! I would buy a lot of things, but first of all I would have a drive in the park. Wasn't it grand! I wish Neil would take us, though perhaps he has not the money of his own to pay for the carriage."
"Bessie," her father said, rousing up from the half dozing condition in which he was most of the time when in the house, "you are hugging a delusion with regard to Neil. He is very kind in a way, when it costs him nothing, but he would never sacrifice his comfort or his feelings for you or me. We are his poor relations, from the country; we are not like his world, or that powdered piece of vanity who was with him yesterday. It would cost him nothing to take us for a drive, for the carriage is his mother's, but you couldn't hire him to go round that park with us; he has that false pride, more common in women than in men, which would keep him from it. He likes you very much—at Stoneleigh, where there are none of his set to look on; but here in London it is different. He might take us to many places, if he would; but he dares not, lest he should be seen. He can send you a blue silk dress, which I half wish you had returned; and he can come here and make your pulse beat faster with his soft words and manner, which mean so little; but other attentions we must not expect from him. I tell you this, my child, because you are getting to be a woman. You were fifteen last March. You are very beautiful, and Neil McPherson knows it, and if you had a fortune he might seek to be more than your cousin; but as it is, don't attach much importance to what he says and does, or be disappointed at what he does not do."
Bessie did not reply for the great lump which had risen in her throat as her father put into words what in part she had suspected, but tried to fight down. She did not like to believe that Neil had a fault, and still she felt that her father might be right, and that Neil was ashamed of them. Something in his manner since they came to London, would indicate as much, and her heart was very sore with a sense of something lost, and there were tears on her long eyelashes as she bent over the darn, too much absorbed in her own thoughts to hear the step on the stairs or know that any one was coming until there was a tap at the open door, and looking up she saw Jack Trevellian standing before her. Mrs. Buncher, who was her own waitress, had bidden him "go right up," and as the door was ajar he stood for an instant on the upper landing and heard Archie say:
"You were fifteen last March. You are very beautiful, and Neil McPherson knows it, and if you had a fortune he might seek to be more than your cousin, but as it is don't attach much importance to what he says and does or be disappointed at what he does not do."
"The old cove has hit it," Jack thought; "he understands Neil to a dot. If Bessie had a fortune he would go down before her in dead earnest; and, perhaps, I would too, for, 'pon my soul, she has the sweetest face I ever saw. What a lovely woman she will make."
And then, there arose before him a vision of a stately old house in the north country, the home of the Trevellians, and in the family vault the present owner, a white haired man of seventy-five was lying, and by his side his puny eldest son, and also stalwart Harry, who looked as if a broad-ax could not kill him, and he, Jack Trevellian now the bachelor with only 500 pounds a year, and most extravagant tastes, was there as Sir Jack, and with him this little Welsh maiden, who was bending over the threadbare coat, and trying to force back the tears her father's words had caused her.
"I am a knave and a murderer," Jack thought. "Uncle Paul, and Dick, and Hal would have to die, and little Flossie, whom I like so much, be left alone, before all this could be;" then, with a premonitory cough, he knocked lightly at the open door.
"Oh, Mr. Trevellian!" Bessie exclaimed, springing to her feet and blushing scarlet. "How you frightened me! Pray walk in. I did not expect you. I—I—am mending father's coat."
"Yes, I see," he answered, offering her his hand after he had greeted her father with his most graceful, courtly manner. "I see you are. I wonder now if you are doing it well. I used to have some experience in such matters when I was roughing it in Australia. I am a beautiful darner; let me try my hand, please;" and taking the coat from her before she had time to recover from her astonishment, he seated himself upon a chair and began industriously to ply the needle, while Bessie looked on amazed.
"You see I am quite a tailor," he said, pushing his thick brown hair back from his white forehead, and flashing upon her one of those rare smiles with which he always obtained the mastery and made friends even of his enemies.
How charming he was, and he never seemed to see the humble room, the faded carpet, the dingy oil-cloth, or the coarse hair-cloth furniture which had offended Neil and made him call the place a hole. Of course, Jack did see them all; he could not help that, but he acted as if he had all his life been accustomed to just such surroundings, and was so familiar and affable that both Bessie and her father were more charmed with him than on the previous day.
"By the way," he said at last, when the coat was mended and approved, "I met Neil at the station; he had been here, I suppose?"
"Yes," Bessie replied, a painful flush suffusing her cheeks as she recalled what her father had said of Neil.
"I am half afraid he has forestalled me, then," Jack continued. "I came to ask you and your father to drive with me in the park this afternoon; that is, if Neil is not ahead of me."
"Oh, Mr. Trevellian," Bessie cried, turning her bright face to him, while the glad tears sprang to her eyes, and she forgot that until yesterday she did not know there was such a person as this elegant man making himself so much at home with them; forgot everything except the pleasure it would be to drive with her father in Hyde Park, and "be one of them," as she expressed it to herself.
"Then Neil has not asked you, and you will go with me?" Jack said, addressing himself to Archie, who replied:
"If Bessie likes—yes; and I thank you so much. You are giving my little girl a greater pleasure than you can ever guess."
Meanwhile the color had all faded from Bessie's face, leaving it very pale, as she stood with clasped hands and wide-open eyes, looking first at herself in the glass and then at Jack. She was thinking of her old linen dress and hat, and of her father's clothes. Neil was ashamed of them, her father had said, and she believed him, though it hurt her cruelly to do so. Would not Mr. Trevellian be ashamed of them too, when he came to realize the contrast there was between them and the people of his set who daily frequented the park?
"What do you say, Miss McPherson? Will you go?" Jack asked, and she answered quickly:
"I'd like it, so much; but I thought—I'm quite sure we had better not;" and as she thus gave up the happiness she had so coveted, she burst into tears—tears for her poverty, and tears for Neil, who had not been so kind to them as this stranger was.
"Why, Bessie," her father said, "what is the matter? I thought you wanted to drive."
"I do, I do," she sobbed; then, with a quick, impatient movement she dashed the tears from her eyes which shone like stars as she lifted them bravely to Jack Trevellian and said, with a tinge of pride in her lone: "I should enjoy the drive more than anything else in the world, and it was kind in you to ask us; but, Mr. Trevellian, you don't know what it would be to you to be seen there with father and me—he in his darned coat and I in this gown, the best I have here, or anywhere, for summer; and then, my hat; the ribbons are all faded and poor, just as we are, dear father and I;" and as she talked she stepped to her father's side and wound her arms around his neck.
There was a world of pathos in the low, sweet voice which said so sadly, "dear father and I," and it moved Jack with a strange power, bringing a moisture to his eyes where tears had not been in years.
Mastering his weakness Jack burst into a merry laugh which was good to hear, as he said:
"Is it the gown, and the hat, and the old darned coat? And do you think I care for trifles like these? I tell you honestly, I would rather take your linen gown, to drive this afternoon, with you in it, than the most elegant dress in London and you out of it."
And so it was arranged that they should go, and Jack staid on and on, and read aloud to Bessie, and told her of his travels in the East, and in Australia, and then, he scarcely knew how or why, he spoke of the old Trevellian home in the north of England, near the border. Trevellian Castle it was called, he said, and it had been in the family for years.
"I have two cousins there," he said, "or rather second cousins, Dick and Harry, and I like them both so much, especially Hal, who is six feet three inches high, and well proportioned. Quite a giant, in fact. Then there is a young girl, Florence Meredith, Flossie we call her, she is so like a playful kitten. She is not a cousin, at least to me, though she calls me that. She is a distant relative of Sir Paul's wife, the mother of Dick and Hal, and was adopted by her when a baby, Flossie is lovely, and you remind me of her, except that she is much younger. She will make a lovely woman, and somebody's heart will ache on her account one of these days."
Jack hardly knew why he was taking to Bessie of little frolicsome Flossie Meredith, the Irish lassie, who was not in the least like Bessie McPherson, except that she was sweet, and loving, and true, and said what she thought, and would have darned a coat or scrubbed the floor, if necessary. He only knew that he liked sitting by Bessie and that if he sat he must talk, and so he kept on and only arose to go when he heard the rattling of tea-cups outside and guessed that Mrs. Buncher might be preparing to bring up luncheon.
About half-past four that afternoon Mrs. Buncher was amazed to see a smart carriage, with handsome horses and servants in livery, drive up before her door and still more amazed to see her lodgers take their seats in it, Bessie and her father, side by side, and Jack Trevellian opposite them, with his back to the driver. It was a glorious June afternoon, and the park was, if possible, gayer and more crowed than on the previous day. The excitement incident upon the passing of the princess had subsided, when the carriage turned in at the Marble Arch and joined the moving throng, which Jack scarcely noticed, so absorbed was he in watching Bessie's face as it sparkled and shone with eager joy and excitement. How beautiful she was in spite of the brown linen and the sleeve puffs which had so annoyed Neil, and while watching her Jack felt his heart thrill with a strange feeling he had never experienced before in all his intercourse with women, and found himself mentally subtracting fifteen from thirty, and feeling rather appalled at the result.
After they had been in the park ten minutes or more and were nearing a curve, he saw a sudden flush in Bessie's face and a gleam of triumph in her blue eyes as she looked ahead of her. Neil was coming from the opposite direction, he was sure, and in a moment the McPherson turn-out appeared, with Neil sitting as Jack sat, his back to the horses and his mother and Blanche opposite. The latter saw Bessie first, and giving her a haughty stare, spoke quickly to Lady Jane, whose stare was even more haughty and supercilious. Neither bowed even to Jack, but Neil lifted his hat with such a look of undisguised astonishment and disapproval on his face that Jack laughed merrily, for he understood perfectly how chagrined Neil was to see him there with Bessie. And Neil was chagrined and out of sorts, and called himself a sneak, and a coward, while to Jack he gave the name fool with an adjective prefixed. He did not even hear what his mother and Blanche were saying of Bessie until he caught the words from the former, "She has rather a pretty face;" then he roused up and rejoined: