“What is it, old fellow?” Jack had said, cheerily, as, after expressing his joy and surprise at meeting his friend so unexpectedly, and motioning him to a seat, he noticed the care-worn look upon his face and the set expression upon his mouth.  “What makes you look so like a grave-yard?  Crossed in love, hey?  I thought it would come to that sometime, and knew you would be hard hit when hit at all.  Tell me about it, do!  Maybe I, too, know how it feels,” and Jack laughed a little meaning laugh as he remembered the time when Bessie’s blue eyes had looked at him and Bessie’s voice had said, “I cannot be your wife.”

“Hush, Jack!” and Grey put up his hand deprecatingly.  “You don’t know how you hurt me.  Bessie is dead!”

“Dead!  Bessie dead!  Oh, Grey!” and Jack nearly leaped from his chair in his first surprise and horror; then he sat down again, and there was silence between the two for a moment, when he said, in a voice Grey would never have known as his:  “When did she die?  Tell me all about it, please, but tell it very slowly, word by word, or I shall not understand you.  I seem to be terribly unstrung, it is so sudden and awful.  Bessie dead!” and he stared at Grey with eyes which did not seem to see anything before them, but rather to be looking at something far away in the past.

And Grey, who was regarding him curiously, knew that mere friendship, however strong, never wore such semblance of grief as this, and there flashed upon him the conviction that, like himself, Jack too had loved the beautiful girl now lost forever to them both, while a chill ran through his veins as he thought that possibly Jack was an accepted lover, and that was why Bessie had shrunk from his words of love, as something she must not listen to.  She was engaged to Jack Trevellian; nothing could be plainer, and with this conviction, which each moment gathered strength in his mind, he resolved to conceal his own heart-wound from his rival, and talk of the dead girl as if he had only been her friend.  Slowly, as Jack had bidden him, he told the story of her sickness, dwelling long on Flossie Meredith’s untiring devotion, but saying nothing of the services he had rendered, saying only that he was so glad he was there, as a gentleman friend was necessary at such a time and in such a place, where greed is the rule and not the exception.

“They were expecting Neil from Naples the day I left, or I should have staid,” he said, and then into Jack’s eyes there crept a strange, hard expression, and he wiped the perspiration from his forehead and lips, as he said: 

“Neil; yes.  It was his place, not yours, or mine, but, oh, Grey, if I might have seen her; if I could have held her dead hand but for a moment and kissed her dear face—­”

Here Jack stopped, for his voice was choked with sobs, and ere he knew what he was doing, Grey said to him: 

“Jack, you loved Bessie McPherson!”