“I am sure you will,” he answered.  “I am to leave Oxford next summer and join my Aunt Lucy, who is coming in June for a trip on the Continent.  But before I go home I shall come here again, and I shall always remember this Christmas as the pleasantest I ever spent, and shall keep the knot of ribbon as a souvenir of Stoneleigh and you.  Good-by,” and with a pressure of the hand he had held in his all the time he was talking, he was gone, and Bessie felt that something very bright and strong and helpful had suddenly been taken from her, and nothing left in its place but Neil, who, by contrast with the American, did not seem to her quite the same Neil as before.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CONTRACT.

For nearly a week longer, Neil remained at Stoneleigh, growing more and more undecided as to his future course, and more and more in love with Bessie, whose evident depression of spirits after the departure of Jack Trevellian and Grey Jerrold had driven him nearly wild.  All the better part of Neil’s nature was in the ascendant now, and he was seriously debating the question whether it were not wiser to marry the woman he loved, and share his poverty with her, than to marry the woman he did not love, even though she had ten thousand a year.  Yes, it was better, he decided at last, and one day when Archie had gone to Bangor and he was alone with Bessie, who sat by the window engaged in the very unpoetical occupation of darning her father’s socks, he spoke his mind.

The storm, which was raging at Christmas, had ceased, and the winter sunshine came in at the window where Bessie was sitting, lighting up her hair and face with a halo which made Neil think of the Madonnas which had looked at him from the walls of the galleries in Rome.

“There!” she said, as she finished one sock, and removing from it the porcelain ball, held it up to view.  “That is done, and it looks almost as good as new.”

Then she took another from the basket, and adjusting the ball inside, began the darning process again, while Neil looked steadily at her.  Had Grey Jerrold been there, he would have thought her the very personification of what a little housewifely wife should be, and would have admired the skill with which she wove back and forth, over and under, filling up the hole with a deftness which even his Aunt Hannah could not have excelled.  But Neil saw only her soft, girlish beauty, and cared nothing for her deftness and thrift.  In fact he was really rebelling hotly against the whole thing—­the socks, the yarn, the porcelain ball, and more than all, the darning-needle she handled so skillfully.  What had the future Mrs. Neil McPherson to do with such coarse things? he thought, as, forgetful of his mother’s anger, he began: 

“I say, Bessie, I wish you would stop that infernal weaving back and forth with that darning-needle, which looks so like an implement of warfare and makes me shudder every time you jab it into the wool.  I want to talk to you.”