Harry stood gazing at her with a pitiful patience, and said kindly, “You fear too much, mother.  I shall live to give you more trouble yet.”

“Even trouble’s precious if that’s all my son is likely to give me.  I would rather have trouble than nothing.”  She went out, closing the door softly as if she were leaving a sick room.  Bessie felt very sorry for her, and when she looked at Harry again, and saw the expression of helpless, painful regret in his face, she could have wept for them both.

“Poor mother! she is bitterly disappointed in me, Bessie,” he said, dropping into one of the huge old elbow-chairs.

“Oh, Harry, it is all her love!  She will get over this, and you will repay her hurt pride another day,” cried Bessie, eager to comfort him.

“Shall I, Bessie?  But how? but when?  We must take counsel together.  They have been telling me it is selfish and a sacrifice and unmanly to bind Bessie to me now, but I see no sign that Bessie wants her freedom,” he said, looking at her with laughing, wistful eyes—­always with that sense of masculine triumph which Bessie’s humility had encouraged.

“Oh, Harry, I want no freedom but the freedom to love and serve you!” cried she with a rush of tears and a hand held out to him.  And then with an irresistible, passionate sorrow she fell on her knees beside him and hid her face on his shoulder.  He put his arm round her and held her fast for several minutes, himself too moved to speak.  He guessed what this sudden outburst of feeling meant:  it meant that Bessie saw him so altered, saw through his quiet humor into the deep anxiety of his heart.

“I’ll conceal nothing from you, Bessie:  I don’t think I have felt the worst of my defeat yet,” were his words when he spoke at last.  She listened, still on her knees:  “It is a common thing to say that suspense is worse to bear than certainty, but the certainty that destroys hope and makes the future a blank is very like a millstone hanged round a man’s neck to sink him in a slough of despondency.  I never really believed it until Dr. Courteney told me that if I wish to save my life it must be at the cost of my ambition; that I can never be an advocate, a teacher, a preacher; that I shall have to go softly all my days, and take care that the winds don’t blow on me too roughly; that I must be an exile from English fogs and cold, let me prefer home ever so dearly; that I must read only a little, and write only a little, and avoid all violent emotions, and be in fact the creature I have most despised—­a poor valetudinarian, always feeling my own pulse and considering my own feelings.”

“You will have to change much more before you will come to that; and I never knew you despise anybody, Harry,” Bessie said with gentle deprecation.  “You had a tender heart from a boy, and others feel kindly towards you.”

“And come what may, my dear little Bessie will keep her faith to me?” said Harry looking down into her sweet eyes.