Bessie's Fortune

Four weeks passed away, and Grey, with his Aunt Lucy, was journeying through Russia, bearing with him a sense of loss and pain. The mails were very irregular, and he had never heard a word either from Flossie or Neil, nor had he written to them. He could not yet bring himself to speak of Bessie, even upon paper, though he sometimes felt a little aggrieved that Neil did not write to him and tell him of his loss. And so the weeks went on, and one day, toward the middle of April, when the English skies were at their best and the hyacinths and crocuses were blooming in the yew-shaded garden at Stoneleigh, a little band of mourners went down the broad graveled walk to the inclosure, where in the narrow space between Archie's grave and the wall another grave was made, and there in silence and in tears they buried--not Bessie--but her mother, poor, weak, frivolous Daisy, who had succumbed to the fever and died after a three weeks' illness.

Bessie was not dead, as the messenger boy had reported to Grey in Florence, but the young girl from America, sick on the same floor, had died about noon on the day of Grey's departure, and with his rather limited knowledge of English the boy had mistaken her for Bessie. And as her brother had arrived that morning and had sworn roundly at the frightful bill presented to him, the boy had naturally confounded this party with the one for whom Grey inquired, and thus had been the cause of much needless pain and sorrow to both Jack Trevellian and Grey. Neil had come from Naples on the morning train, very tired and worn with his trip to Egypt, and a good deal out of sorts because of a letter received from his mother in Naples in which she rated him soundly for his extravagance, telling him he must economize, and that the check she sent him--a very small one--must suffice until his return to England, where she confidently expected him to marry Cousin Blanche before the season was over.

"I hear," she wrote in conclusion, "that the widow of Archibald McPherson is in Rome with her daughter, but I trust you will not allow them to entangle you in any way. The mother will fleece you out of every farthing you have, while the daughter--well I do not know her, so will not say what she may do; only keep clear of them both and shun that crafty woman as you would the plague."

With this letter in his pocket and barely enough money to defray his own expenses for a few weeks longer, it is not to be wondered at, if Neil was not in a very jubilant state of mind when he reached the Quirinal, and found matters as they were--Bessie very low with the fever, of which he had a mortal terror and her mother destitute of funds except as Grey Jerrold had supplied them, or as she had borrowed from Mrs. Meredith, to whom she owed twenty pounds, with no possible means of paying. All this and more, she tearfully explained to Neil, who listened to her with a great sinking at his heart and a feeling that he had plunged into something dreadful, from which he could not escape. There was manliness enough in his nature to make him wince a little, when he heard what Grey had done, while at the same time he was conscious of a pang of jealousy as he reflected that only a stronger sentiment than mere friendship for Bessie could have actuated Grey, generous and noble as he knew him to be.