Mr. Cecil Burleigh, reappearing midway the afternoon, was summoned to his aunt’s closet and bidden to explain himself.  The explanation was far from easy.  Lady Angleby was profoundly irritated, and reproached her nephew with his blundering folly in visiting Miss Julia Gardiner in Miss Fairfax’s company.  She refused to believe but that his fascination must have proved irresistible if Miss Fairfax had not been led to the discovery of that faded romance.  Was he quite sure that the young lady’s answer was conclusive?  Perfectly conclusive—­so conclusive that he should not venture to address her again.  “Not after Julia’s marriage?” his sister whispered.  Lady Angleby urged a temporary retreat and then a new approach:  it was impossible but that a fine, spirited girl like Miss Fairfax must have ambition and some appreciation of a distinguished mind; and how was her dear Cecil to support his position without the fortune she was to bring him?  At this point Mr. Cecil Burleigh manifested a contemptuous and angry impatience against himself, and rose and left the discussion to his grieved and disappointed female relatives.  Mr. Fairfax, on being informed of the repulse he had provoked, received the news calmly, and observed that it was no more than he had anticipated.

Towards evening Bessie felt her fortitude failing her, and did not appear at dinner nor in the drawing-room.  Her excuses were understood and accepted, and in the morning early Mr. Cecil Burleigh conveyed himself away by train to London, that his absence might release her from seclusion.  Before he went, in a consultation with his aunt and Mr. Fairfax, it was agreed that the late episode in his courtship should be kept quiet and not treated as final.  Later in the day Mr. Fairfax carried his granddaughter home to Abbotsmead, not unconsoled by the reflection that he was not to be called upon to resign her to make bright somebody else’s hearth.  Bessie was much subdued.  She had passed a bad night, she had shed many tears, and though she had not encountered one reproach, she was under the distressing consciousness that she had vexed several people who had been good to her.  At the same time there could not be two opinions of the wicked duplicity of a gentleman who could profess to love and wish to marry her when his heart was devoted to another lady:  she believed that she never could forgive him that insult.

Yet she was sorry even to tears again when she remembered him in the dull little drawing-room at Ryde, and Miss Julia Gardiner telling him that she had forgotten her old songs which he liked better than her new ones; for it had dawned upon her that this scene—­it had struck her then as sad—­must have been their farewell, the finis to the love-chapter of their youth.  Bessie averted her mind from the idea that Miss Julia Gardiner had consented to marry a rich, middle-aged gentleman who was a widower:  she did not like it, it was utterly repugnant, she hated to think of it.  Oh, that people would marry