Bessie rose trembling and left the room, tears and indignation struggling for the mastery.  “Oh, grandpapa! why will you say such things?” was all her remonstrance, but she felt that there are some wrongs in this life very hard to bear.

Mr. John Short sat mute for some time after the young lady’s departure.  The squire gloomed sorrowfully:  “From first to last my course is nothing but disappointment.”

“I wish, sir, that you could be prevailed on to see Mr. Laurence?” suggested the lawyer.  “His wife is a very good little lady, and the boys you might be proud of.  Pray, sir, give yourself that chance of happiness for your closing days.”

“I had other plans.  There will be no marriage, Short:  I understand Elizabeth.  In warning me that she will return to the Forest when I am gone, she just tells me that my hopes of her and Burleigh are all moonshine.  Well, let Laurence come.  Let him come and take possession with his children; they can leave me my corner of the house in peace.  I shall not need it very long.  And Elizabeth can go home when she pleases.”

Mr. Fairfax’s resentment was very bitter against Bessie, at first, for the frank exposition she had made of her future intentions.  She had meant no unkindness, but simple honesty.  He did not take it so, and when her customary duty and service brought her next into his presence he made her feel how deeply she had offended.  He rejected her offer to read to him, put aside her helping hand, and said he would have Jonquil to assist him; she need not remain.  He uttered no accusation against her and no reproach; he gave her no opportunity of softening her abrupt announcement; he just set her at a distance, as it were, and made himself unapproachable.  Bessie betook herself in haste to her white parlor, to hide the blinding tears in her eyes and the mortification in her heart.  “And he wonders that so few love him!” she said to herself, not without anger even in her pitiful yearning to be friends again.

A week of alienation followed this scene, and Bessie was never more miserable.  Day by day she tried to resume her loving care of her grandfather, and day by day she was coldly repulsed.  Jonquil, Macky, Mrs. Betts, all sympathized in silence; their young lady was less easy to condole with now than when she was fresh from school.  The old squire was as wretched as he made his granddaughter.  He had given permission for his son to come to Abbotsmead, and he seemed in no haste to embrace the permission.  When he came at last, he brought little Justus with him, but he had to say that it was only for a few hours.  In fact, his wife was extremely unwilling to abandon their happy, independent home in the Minster Court, and he was equally unwilling to force her inclination.  Mr. Fairfax replied, “You know best,” and gazed at his grandson, who, from between his father’s knees, gazed at him again without any advance towards good-fellowship.  A formal reconciliation ensued, but that was all.  For the kindness that springs out of a warm, affectionate nature the old squire had to look to Elizabeth, and without any violent transition they glided back into their former habits and relations.  Bessie was saddened a little by her late experiences, but she was not quite new to the lesson that the world is a place of unsatisfied hopes and defeated intentions.