Bessie's Fortune

The carnival was raging through the streets of Rome, and the Corso was thronged with masqueraders and lined with spectators--Italians, English, and Americans--all eager for the sight. Upon the balcony of a private dwelling, for which an enormous price had been paid because it commanded a fine view of the street below, sat Miss Lucy Grey, with Grey Jerrold and a party of friends. Lucy had been in Rome three or four weeks, staying at a pension, in the Via Nazzionale, which she preferred to the fashionable and noisy hotels.

Grey, who had taken the trip to Egypt, had only been in Rome a few days, and as there was no room for him at the pension, he was stopping at the Quirinal, near by. He had seen the carnival twice before, and cared but little for it; but it was new to his Aunt Lucy, and for her sake he was there, standing at her side and apparently watching the gay pageant as it moved by, though in reality he was scarcely thinking of it at all, for all his thoughts and interest were centered in the white, worn face he had seen that morning in a close, dark room at the hotel, where Bessie McPherson lay dying, he verily believed.

On the night of his arrival at the hotel, which was very full, he had been given a room on the fourth floor looking into a court, and his rest had been disturbed by the murmur of voices in the room adjoining his own.

An Italian voice, which he was sure was a doctor's--a clear, decided, youthful voice, with a slight Irish brogue, which he knew must belong to a young girl, and an older, softer voice, often choked with tears, and occasionally a moaning sound, and wild snatches of song, which affected him strangely, for this voice, broken and weak as it was, had in it something familiar, and he tried in vain to recall where he had heard it before and under what circumstances. Once he thought he heard his own name, as if the sick girl (he felt intuitively that it was a girl) were calling for him, and, starting up, he listened intently, but caught only the tones of the tearful, sobbing voice which said: "Hush, darling, hush! We are all here; try to be quiet and sleep."

At last, worn out with wakefulness and the fatigue of his long journey from Naples, Grey fell into a deep sleep, from which he did not waken until nearly ten the next morning. Dressing himself hastily he went at once to the office and asked who occupied the room adjoining his own.