With a cry of glad surprise, Bessie threw herself into his arms, and wept as she had not done since her father died.

“Oh, Neil,” she sobbed, “I am so glad, I have wanted you so much, and been so wretched because you neither wrote nor came.”

“But I did write you, darling, before I left Vichy, and the letter must have gone astray,” he said, “and then the moment I got Jack’s letter I started and came to you.  Don’t cry, Bessie; it hurts me to see you feel so badly.  Try and be quiet, and tell me all about it, and what Grey Jerrold and Jack did and said.  They were both here, I understand, and both in love with you.”

Neil spoke a little sharply now, and Bessie looked inquiringly at him, as, drawing her to a seat, he sat down beside her, and with his arm around her and her head upon his breast he went on: 

“Jack wrote me all about it—­that he believed Grey pretty far gone, but that he should get the start and ask you to be Lady Trevellian, and I believe he will do it, too; and if he does I hope you will put him down effectually, but don’t for Heaven’s sake, tell him of our engagement.  That must be our secret awhile longer.  I cannot meet mother’s disapproval just yet.  Do you believe, that horrid old aunt in America wrote asking me to come out there and oversee the hands in a cotton mill.  Niggers, I dare say, as I believe they are mostly that in Massachusetts, are they not?”

Bessie did not reply to this, but said to him, quietly: 

“Mr. Trevellian asked me to be his wife—­here—­this morning, and I told him no, and that I was plighted to you.”

“Oh, Bessie, how could you have been so indiscreet.  Now the news must reach mother, and my life will be a burden to me,” Neil exclaimed, with so much severity in his tone that Bessie shrank a little from him as she replied: 

“I had to tell him, Neil.  There was no other way to make him believe I meant it, he was so much in earnest.  He will not repeat it.  He has too much honor in his nature for that.  He is one of the best and noblest men I ever knew.”

Bessie was very earnest in her defense of Jack, and Neil grew angry at once.

“Maybe you prefer him to me?” he said.  “By Jove, I do not blame you if it is so.  You’d better be Lady Trevellian, with plenty of money, than plain Mrs. Neil McPherson, not knowing where I the next meal is to come from.  Say the word and I will set you free, though it breaks my heart to do it.”

No wonder if Bessie felt that Neil’s presence was productive of more pain than pleasure, or if for a moment she felt keenly the contrast between his manner and Jack’s.  But Neil’s mood soon changed, and winding his arm around her, and kissing her fondly, he called himself a brute and a savage to wound her so, and talked of their future, when he could be always with her, and worked himself up to the point of proposing marriage at once—­a private marriage, of course, which must be kept secret