“It will soon be two years since I first saw you, with your face against the window, looking out into the darkness at the big American.  I dare say you wished me in Guinea.”

“That I did,” Bessie answered laughingly, as she deepened her clasp of his hand, “for I did not at all know what to do with you.”

“But I remember well that you gave up your own cozy bedroom, like the dear, unselfish little girl you are,” Grey said, and Bessie rejoined.

“Yes, but I hope you remember, too, that you would not take it, and, pretending to have the asthma, said you preferred the north chamber, with the storm and the cold and the rats.  Oh, Grey, honestly I did not want you here one bit.  I thought you would be in the way but I am so glad now, for if you had not come I might never have been your wife,” and Bessie nestled closer to the arm which was her rightful resting-place, and which encircled her fondly, as Grey replied a little teasingly: 

“No, not my wife perhaps, but you might have been Neil’s, eh?”

“No, Grey, if I had not met you, I could not have married Neil.  I once thought I loved him, it is true, but I know now I did not.  We were so unlike we could never have been happy.  But I like him very much and am sorry for him, if he really cared for me.  I wonder what he will say when he hears I am married and am here in Wales.  He did not even know I was engaged.  I think you ought to write and tell him, and perhaps invite him here for the holidays.  Do you think he would care to come?”

“No, Bessie.  Neither would I care to have him,” Grey replied.  “I would rather spend the first Christmas alone with you in the place where I first saw you; but I am willing to write to Neil, and when we go to London I will find him of course, and you shall see him.”

“Thank you, Grey,” Bessie said, just as Dorothy came in with a letter for her mistress, who took it in her hand and bending to the firelight recognized Neil’s hand-writing, while her cheeks flushed as she saw her new name, Mrs. Grey Jerrold, and thought that Neil was the first to address her thus.

Breaking the seal, she read as follows: 

    “LONDON, December ——­, 18—.

“My Dear Cousin:  You may think it strange that I have not written before this and congratulated you upon your marriage.  But I did not know of it until a week ago, when I came home from the Continent, summoned by the news that my mother was very ill.  Then I found a telegram from my Aunt Betsey, which said, ’Bessie was married yesterday to Grey Jerrold and sails to-day for Liverpool.’  I was not greatly surprised, and I am glad that it is Grey, I know he is worthy of you and I hope you will both be happy, even if I am wretched and forlorn, for I am more so than I ever was in my life before.  Mother is dead and we have just returned from burying her at the old home in Middlesex.  She died of typhoid-pneumonia the day after my return.