"Why didn't I?" he answered. "I am going to tell you why I didn't, and why Jack did. He is his own master, with money to do as he likes, and no one to question or nag him at home; while I am not my own master at all, and have no money except what mother chooses to give me, and that is not much. Father, you know, is poor, and mother holds the purse, which is not a large one, and keeps me awful short at times, especially after paying my Oxford bills and a few debts I contracted the last year. There would have been no end of a row if I had asked her for money to spend on you and your father."
"Does she then hate us so much?" Bessie asked, and Neil replied: "She cannot hate you, as she does not know you; but, you see, she is prejudiced against your mother and visits her anger upon your innocent head. I wanted her to call upon you and invite you to our house, and I wanted to take you to drive in the park, but I could not; my hands were tied. Do you suppose it was pleasant for me to see Jack Trevellian doing what I ought to have done?"
"No," Bessie replied, beginning to feel a great pity for Neil, who had suffered so much. "No, and I am glad you have told me, for I thought--I feared you were ashamed of us, and it hurt me a little."
There was a tremor in her voice which made Neil tighten the clasp of his arm around her, while he bent his head so low that his hair touched her forehead, as he exclaimed: "Ashamed of you, Bessie! Never! How could I be ashamed of the dearest, sweetest little cousin a man ever had? I tell you I am the victim of circumstances!"
And bending his head still lower, "the victim of circumstances" kissed the girlish lips, which kissed him back again in token of reconciliation, and restored faith in him.
Poor, tired Jack, dreaming that night that he was a circus-rider and jumping through a hoop for Bessie's pleasure, would have felt that all his fatigue and back ache, and the plaster which caused him so much discomfort, might have been spared, or at least were wasted on the girl with whom the kiss given in the deepening twilight was more powerful than all he had done for her, could he have known of that scene in the gardens. But he did not know of it, and at a comparatively early hour next morning he was at Mrs. Buncher's, where Bessie greeted him with her sweetest smile and thanked him again for all he had done for them.