"We cannot be mistaken," Miss McPherson said to Lucy, after Bessie had left them; "but let me manage the young man."
And when, at last, Grey came, and, after greeting the ladies, asked after Bessie, Miss McPherson replied that she was better and had just left them for the garden; and then, as Grey made no move to go in search of her, she suddenly turned upon him with the exclamation: "Grey Jerrold, you are a fool!"
"Ye-es?" he answered, interrogatively, as he regarded her with astonishment.
"I repeat it--you are either a fool or blind, or both!" she continued. "But I am neither, and I know you love my niece, and she loves you, and I know too that you think she is engaged to Neil McPherson, but she is not."
"What!" Grey exclaimed, starting to his feet. "What are you saying?"
"I am saying that Bessie's engagement was broken before she left England, and that she--"
"She--what?" Grey cried, almost pleadingly; and Miss McPherson rejoined: "She is in the garden. You will find her in the rose-arbor."
Grey waited for no more, but went rapidly in the direction of the summer-house where Bessie sat with her back to him, and did not see him until his hands were upon her face and his voice said to her: "Bessie, darling Bessie!"
Then she started suddenly, and when Grey came round in front of her, and taking her hands in his kissed her lips, she kissed him unhesitatingly, and then burst into a paroxysm of tears.
"What is it, Bessie? Why are you crying so?" Grey said, as he still held her hands and kept kissing her forehead and lips.
"They said you were going to be married," Bessie sobbed, as Grey knelt beside her, and laying her head upon his shoulder, tried to brush her tears away.
"Who said I was to be married?" he asked, in some surprise, and Bessie answered him: "Your Aunt Lucy said she thought so, and I--oh, Grey, what must you think of me?" and lifting her head from his shoulder, Bessie covered her face with her hands, crying for very shame that she had betrayed what she ought to have kept to herself.
"What must I think of you?" Grey replied. "Why, this--that you are the dearest, sweetest little girl in all the world, and that I am the happiest man. I do not know what Aunt Lucy meant by saying I was going to be married; but I am, and very soon, too--just as soon as you are able to be present at the ceremony. Will that be at Christmas-time, do you think?"