“Please, Jennie, go away,” she said; “I would rather be alone.”

So Jennie left her, and, covering her face with her hands, Bessie sobbed, piteously: 

“Oh, Father in heaven, is there never to be any joy for me?  Must I always be so desolate and lonely, and is it wicked to wish that I were dead?”

For several minutes poor Bessie wept on, and then with a great effort she dried her tears, and, leaning her head back in her chair, began to live over again every incident of her life as connected with Grey Jerrold.  And while she sat there thus, the Boston train stopped at the Allington station, and she heard the roar and the ring as it started on its way.  Twenty minutes later she heard behind her the sound of a footstep, apparently hurrying toward her, and thought, if she thought at all, that it was Jennie coming for her.  But surely Jennie’s tread was never so rapid and eager as this, nor were Jennie’s hands as soft and warm as the hands which encircled her face, nor Jennie’s voice like this which said to her: 

“Bessie, darling Bessie!”

Grey had come to Allington from Springfield, where he had been on business for his father, and both Lucy and Miss McPherson knew that he was coming, and had chosen that day for Bessie’s visit to the park, and had purposely talked before her of his probable marriage, in order to test the nature of Bessie’s feelings for him.

“We cannot be mistaken,” Miss McPherson said to Lucy, after Bessie had left them; “but let me manage the young man.”

And when, at last, Grey came, and, after greeting the ladies, asked after Bessie, Miss McPherson replied that she was better and had just left them for the garden; and then, as Grey made no move to go in search of her, she suddenly turned upon him with the exclamation: 

“Grey Jerrold, you are a fool!”

“Ye-es?” he answered, interrogatively, as he regarded her with astonishment.

“I repeat it—­you are either a fool or blind, or both!” she continued.  “But I am neither, and I know you love my niece, and she loves you, and I know too that you think she is engaged to Neil McPherson, but she is not.”

“What!” Grey exclaimed, starting to his feet.  “What are you saying?”

“I am saying that Bessie’s engagement was broken before she left England, and that she—­”

“She—­what?” Grey cried, almost pleadingly; and Miss McPherson rejoined: 

“She is in the garden.  You will find her in the rose-arbor.”

Grey waited for no more, but went rapidly in the direction of the summer-house where Bessie sat with her back to him, and did not see him until his hands were upon her face and his voice said to her: 

“Bessie, darling Bessie!”

Then she started suddenly, and when Grey came round in front of her, and taking her hands in his kissed her lips, she kissed him unhesitatingly, and then burst into a paroxysm of tears.