Two years and a half after that visit to London, Bessie McPherson, now a young lady of nearly eighteen, stood by the western window of the old house at Stoneleigh reading a letter from Neil. He had been at Stoneleigh several times since that summer in London, and these visits, with his letters always so affectionate and bright, were the only breaks in Bessie's monotonous life. Once Jack had been there for a few days, or rather to the "George," where he slept and took his meals, spending the rest of the time with Bessie, who interested him more and more, and from whom he at last fled as from a positive danger. With his limited income and his habits, he could not hope to marry, even if Bessie would have joined her young life with his matured one, which he doubted, and, with a great pang of regret he left her in the old Stoneleigh garden and did not dare look back at her, sitting there with the troubled look on her face, because he was leaving, lest he should turn back and, taking her in his arms, say the words he must not say.
And so he went his way to busy London, and heard from Blanche that the white-haired old earl in the north of England was dead, and the puny Dick master in his place.
"Only two between you and a fortune," seemed whispered in his ear, and with it came a thought of Bessie sitting under the old yew tree in the summer sunshine and looking after him.
"Murderer!" he said to himself again, "do you wish Dick dead and Hal, too, the finest fellow that ever lived, for the sake of a young girl whose mind is full of a prig like Neil McPherson?"
And so he put all thoughts of Bessie aside, and wore mourning for his great-uncle, and wrote a letter to the new heir, Sir Dick, and sent his love to Flossie, and went no more to Stoneleigh. But Neil was coming again, and his letter to Bessie was as follows: "LONDON, Dec, 20th, 18--, "MY SWEETEST COUSIN: and when I say that I mean it, for though Blanche is just as much my cousin as you are, and is in her way sweet as sugar, she bears no comparison to you, my little Dot, as I used to call you when you were a wee thing and let me kiss you as often as I liked. My Welsh rose I call you now, when you wear long dresses and will not let me kiss you, or at least will not kiss me as you did before you made that trip to London two years ago last June. Something happened to you then which shot you up into a woman, and I lost my little Bessie. But how absurdly I am writing, as if I were your lover, instead of your cousin, and as good as engaged to Blanche. I suppose mother would break her heart if I did not marry that £10,000 a year. I used to say I wouldn't, you know; but, nous verrons; what I wish to tell you now is, that I am coming to Stoneleigh for the holidays. Mother wishes me to go with her and Blanche to some stupid place near Edinburgh, and we have had a jolly row about it, but I prefer Stoneleigh and you; so you may expect me the 23rd, on the evening train from Bangor; and please tell old Dorothy to have a roasting fire in my room, which you know is something after the stable order, and oh, if she would have plum-pudding and chicken-pie for dinner! You see, I make myself quite at home at Stoneleigh, and I have a weakness for the good things of this world. I do not believe I was cut out for a poor man. I might be poor and honest, but never poor and happy.