And so Neil shut himself in his room for some hours each day, and commenced the story which was to make his fortune.  But as Bessie sat for his heroine and Grey Jerrold for his hero, he became furiously jealous when he reached the love passages, and tearing up his manuscript in disgust, abandoned the field of authorship forever.

Suddenly his thoughts turned to the old aunt in America, whom, his fancy painted as fabulously rich.  She could help him, and perhaps if he wrote her the right kind of a letter she would.  And so he set himself to the task, which proved harder, even, than the story-writing had been.  Neil knew his Aunt Betsey was very eccentric, and he hardly knew how to make her under stand him without saying too much and so ruining his cause.

“By Jove, I’ll tell her the truth, that I want money in order to marry Bessie,” he said, and he took Bessie for his starting paint, and waxed eloquent as he described her sweetness and beauty, and told of her life of toil and care and self-denial at Stoneleigh, with her father, whom he represented as just on the verge of the grave.  Then he told of his engagement and his mother’s fierce opposition to it, and the sure poverty which awaited him if he remained true to his cousin, as he meant to do, and then he came to the real object of his letter, and asked for money on which to live until his mother was reconciled, as she was sure to be in time, when she knew how lovely and good Bessie was.  A few thousand pounds would suffice, he said, as he knew his father would allow him to occupy a house in Warwick Crescent which belonged to him and which would save his rent.  And then, growing bolder as he advanced, he hinted at the possibility that his aunt might be intending to make Bessie her heir, and said if it were so he should be glad to know it, and would keep the secret religiously from Bessie until such time as he might reveal it.  A speedy answer to this letter was desired, and Neil closed by signing himself: 

“Your very affectionate nephew, Neil McPherson.”

He posted the letter himself, and feeling almost sure of a favorable response, went and bought Bessie a small solitaire ring, such as he could afford, and sent it with the most loving, hopeful letter he had yet written to her.

CHAPTER XIV.

MISS MCPHERSON AND THE LETTER.

Nine years had made but little change in Miss Betsey McPherson, either mentally or physically.  As she had been at the Thanksgiving dinner where we first met her, so she was now, with possibly a little sharper tone in her voice and a shade more of eccentricity in her nature.  As she lived alone then with her two servants, so she lived alone now, with the same cook in the kitchen, but not the same housemaid to attend her.  Flora had been married for five or six years to a respectable mechanic, and lived in a small white house across the common, with three children to care for—­two boys and a girl.  This last she had thought to call for her former mistress to whom she had timidly expressed her intention, asking if she would be godmother.