He was taking everything for granted, and Bessie knew that he was, and knew what he meant, but she would scarcely have been a woman if she had not wished him to put his meaning in words which could not be mistaken, so she said to him amid her tears--glad, happy tears they were now: "Whom are you to marry?"
"Whom?" he repeated. "Whom but you, Bessie McPherson, whom I believe I have loved ever since that Christmas I spent at Stoneleigh two years ago. Do you remember the knot of plaid ribbon you wore that night and which I won at play? I have it still, as one of my choicest treasures, and the curl of hair which Flossie cut from your head, in Rome, when we thought you would die, I divided that tress with Jack Trevellian the night we talked together of you, with breaking hearts, because we believed you were dead. He told me then of his love for you, and I confessed mine to him, though we both supposed that, had you lived, Neil would have claimed you as his. Oh, Bessie, those were dreary months to me, when I thought you dead, and may you never know the anguish I endured when I stood by that grave in Stoneleigh and believed you lying there. But God has been very good to me, far better than I deserve. He has given you to me at last and nothing shall separate us again."
While Grey talked, he was caressing Bessie's face and hair, and stooping occasionally to kiss her, while she sat dumb and motionless, so full was she of the great joy which had come so suddenly upon her, and which, as yet, she could not realize.
"We will be married at Christmas," Grey said; "the anniversary of the time when I first saw you, little dreaming then, that you would one day be my wife. Shall it not be so?"
What Bessie might have said or how long the interview might have lasted, we have no means of knowing, for a shrill cry in the distance of "None of that, misther! for I'm comin' meself to take the hide of ye," startled them from their state of bliss, and looking up they saw Jennie bearing swiftly down upon them, with both arms extended ready for fight.
Jennie, who knew nothing of Grey's arrival, had visited with the servants, until she concluded it was time to return to her young mistress. As she came within sight of the summer-house what was her horror to see a tall young man with his arms around Bessie, and, as it seemed to her, trying to take her from the chair.