Releasing her, he turned to Grey, who, during this little scene, had considerately turned his back upon them, and stood looking from the window as unconcernedly as if no tall, handsome cousin were kissing his wife and crying over her. He had perfect faith in Bessie, and he pitied Neil, and when the latter offered him his hand he took it, and pressing it warmly, said: "Good by, and God bless you. As long as I live you will have a friend in me. I think you will succeed in India, but if you fail, try America. You are sure to succeed there, if you only have the will, and I can help you some, perhaps. Good-by."
Neil made no answer, except to wring Grey's hand, and then he passed out from the old life to the new, with a pretty equal chance for failure or success.
This was in April, and the latter part of May the Jerrolds sailed for America, but before they did so Bessie received a letter from Flossie, who was at her grandmother's home near Portrush, in Ireland, and who wrote as follows: "DEAR BESSIE: I ought to have written you long ago, and thanked you for your kind invitation to go with you to your American home. I should have liked it of all things in the world, for to see America and know what it is like, has been the dream of my life. You knew it is the paradise of my countrymen, the land into which Pat and Bridget entered when Johnny Bull came out. For various reasons, however, I must decline your invitation, and I am going to tell you all about it, but the beginning and the end lie so far apart that I must go way back to the time when, owing to some mistake, Jack Trevellian thought you died in Rome, and, because he thought so, he made a hermit of himself and wandered off into the Tyrol and the Bavarian Alps, where nobody spoke English, and where all he knew of the civilized world was what he gleaned from German papers. Nobody could communicate with him, for when he wrote to his steward, as he did sometimes, he never said where a letter could reach him, or where he was going next.
"At last, however, he concluded to go home, and got as far as Paris, where grandma and I happened to be staying. This was last August, and I was in the Rue de Rivoli one day, near Place Vendome, when, who should turn from a side street a few rods in advance of me but Jack himself, looking very rough and queer, with a long beard and a shocking hat. He did not see me, and was walking so fast that I had to run to overtake him, and even then I might not have captured him if I had not taken the handle of my umbrella and hooked it into his coat collar behind. This brought him to a stand-still and nearly threw him down. You ought to have seen the expression of his face, when he turned to see who was garroting him in broad daylight, for he thought it was that.