remembered with a pang that Bessie did not play at all, except simple accompaniments to songs, and found himself wondering in a vague kind of way what people would say to a Mrs. Neil McPherson who had no accomplishments except a sweet voice for ballad singing and a tolerable knowledge of French and German, which she had picked up when a child leading a Bohemian life on the Continent.  Bessie was neither learned, nor accomplished, nor fashionable; but she was good and pure and beautiful, and Neil loved her with all the intensity of his selfish nature, and meant to be true to her.  He wrote to her, three times a week, long letters, full of love and tenderness, and of Grey Jerrold, with whom he corresponded.

Once he tried to tell his mother of his engagement.  She had been speaking to him of Blanche, talking as if everything were settled, and asking why it were not as well to announce the engagement at once.

“Because,” Neil said to her, “I am not engaged to Blanche, and do not know that I ever shall be.  To tell you the truth, mother, I love my Cousin Bessie better than any woman living, and if I had money of my own I would marry her to-morrow.”

This was a great deal for Neil to say, knowing his mother as he did, and possibly he might not have said it could he have foreseen the storm which followed his declaration.  What she had once before said to him upon the subject was nothing when compared with her present anger and scorn, as she assured him again and again that if he married Bessie McPherson, she would at once cut off his allowance and leave him to shirk for himself.  That was the way she expressed it, for she could be very coarse in her language at times, even if she were a titled lady.  Bessie should never enter her house as her daughter-in-law, she said, and she would not only cut off Neil’s allowance during her life, but at her death would leave what little money she had to some one else—­Jack Trevellian, perhaps, who would represent the family far better than her scapegrace son, with his low McPherson tastes.

After this Neil could not tell her.  On the contrary, he bent every energy to keep the secret from her, and never again mentioned Bessie or Stoneleigh in her presence, but devoted himself to Blanche in a friendly, brotherly kind of way, which kept the peace in that quarter and left him in quiet.  But his thoughts were busy with plans for the future, when Bessie would be his wife and he disinherited, for her sake.  Once he calculated the possibility of living at Stoneleigh on the meagre annuity which he knew Archie received, and which would die with him.  But he could not do that, and he called himself a sneak for considering the matter an instant.

“If there was something I could do which would not compromise me,” he thought.  “I might become an inventor, or an author.  I could do better at that, for I have some talent for yarning, they say.  Wilkie Collins and George Eliot make heaps of money with their pens.  Yes, I believe I’ll try it.”