Grey’s voice was very low and soft, and had in it all the tenderness and gentleness of a sympathizing woman, and it touched Bessie as Neil’s words of love could not have touched her had he been there beside her.  Bursting into a fresh fit of sobbing, she told Grey of her father’s serious illness, and her loneliness and desolation, and how glad she was he had come.

“I telegraphed to Neil,” she said, “and thought you were he, though it is not time for him to be here, even if he received the telegram.  Perhaps he is not in London:  do you know?”

Grey did not know, as he had not heard from Neil in some time; but he comforted Bessie as well as he could, and said he hoped her father might yet recover.

“No, he cannot,” Bessie replied.  “He will soon be dead, and I shall be alone, all alone; for mother has gone to America with a Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, who lives in or near Allington?  You know her, I believe,” and Bessie looked up in time to see the look of surprise and the half-amused smile which flitted over Grey’s face as he replied: 

“Mrs. Rossiter-Browne?  Oh, yes, I know her.  I have always known her.  She is a good, kind-hearted woman, and your mother is safe with her.”

Bessie felt intuitively that Grey was keeping something back, which he might have told her, but she respected him far more for speaking kindly of Mrs. Rossiter-Browne than she would have done, if he had said, as he might have done:  “Oh, Yes, I know Mrs. Rossiter-Browne.  She was for years my Aunt Lucy’s hired girl, Angeline Peters, who married Isaac Brown, the hired man, and became plain Mrs. Ike Brown, until some lucky speculation turned the tide and gave them immense wealth, when she blossomed out into a fine lady, and, dropping the Ike, adopted her husband’s middle name, Rossiter, with a hyphen to heighten the effect, and so became Mrs. Rossiter-Browne.”

All this Bessie learned afterward, but now she was too full of grief to care what Mrs. Rossiter-Browne had been, or what she was.  All her thoughts were with her father, whose weak voice was soon heard calling to her: 

“Bessie, are you here?”

“Yes, father,” she said, going quickly into the sick-room, followed by Grey, who saw in Archie’s face the look which comes once, and but once, to all, and knew that his life was numbered by hours, if not, indeed, by minutes.

“Bessie,” the sick man said, as she bent over him “has he come?  I heard some one speaking to you.”

“Neil has not come; it is not time.  It is Mr. Jerrold who is here.  He was with us last Christmas, you remember.”

“Yes,” Mr. McPherson replied, “the American; I remember.  I liked him very much.  I wish it were he rather than Neil.”

Grey looked curiously at Bessie, who knew what her father meant and that his mind was wandering.  After a few moments, during which Archie appeared to be sleeping, he started suddenly and seemed to listen intently.  Then he said: