GREY AND HIS AUNT.

Grey had been very sick the entire voyage.  Since the day when he heard that Bessie was dead he had lost all interest in everything, and though he went wherever his aunt wished to go, it was only to please her, and not because he cared in the least for anything he saw.  From Flossie he had never heard, for her letter did not reach him, and he had no thought that Bessie was alive, and everywhere he went he saw always the dear face, white and still, as he knew it must have looked when it lay in the coffin.  Sometimes the pain in his heart was so hard to bear that he was half tempted to tell his aunt of his sorrow and crave her sympathy.  But this he had not done, and Bessie’s name had never passed his lips since he heard she was dead.

At last, alarmed by the pallor of his face, and the tired, listless manner, so unlike himself, Lucy suggested that they go home, and to this Grey readily assented.  But first he must see Bessie’s grave, and at London he left his aunt in charge of some friends who were going home in the same ship and would see her to Liverpool.  He was going to Wales on business, he said, and as she knew he had been there two or three times before, Lucy asked no questions, and had no suspicion of the nature of the business which took him first to Carnarvon, where a last fruitless search was made for Elizabeth Rogers or some of her kin, and then to Stoneleigh, which he reached on an early morning train, the same which took Bessie to Liverpool!  Thus near do the wheels of fate oftentimes come to each other.

In her hurry to secure a compartment, Bessie did not see the young man alighting from a carriage only the fourth from the one she was entering, and as both Anthony and Dorothy, who were at the station with her, went across the bridge to do some errands before returning home, no one observed Grey as he hurried along the road to Stoneleigh, and entering the grounds, stood at last by the new grave in the corner close to the fence, where he believed Bessie was lying.

Bearing his head to the falling rain, which seemed to cool his burning brow, he said aloud: 

“Darling Bessie, can you see me now?  Do you know that I am here, standing by your grave, and do you know how much I love you?  Surely it is no wrong to Neil for me to whisper to your dead ears the story of my love.  Oh, Bessie, I have come to say good-by, and my heart is breaking as I say it.  If you could only answer me—­could give me some token that you know, it would be some comfort to me when I am far away, for I am going home, Bessie, to the home over the sea, where I once hoped I might take you as my wife, before I knew of Neil’s prior claim, but so long as life lasts I shall remember the dear little girl who was so much to me; and here I pledge my word that no other love shall ever come between us.  I have loved you; I have lost you; but thank God, I have not lost your memory.  Good-by, darling; good-by.”