to the rectory while her father was alive. She did not offer
explanations, but in her own mind she peremptorily refused to deny or
relinquish that cousinship. She went on eating in a dream of confusion,
very rosy as to the cheeks and very downcast as to the eyes, but not at
all ashamed. The little girls wondered with great amazement. Mr. Wiley
did not relish his rebuke, and eyed Bessie with anything but charity.
His bad genius set him expatiating further on the hazardous theme of
ambition in youths of low birth and mean estate, with allusions to Brook
and the wheelwright's shed that could not be misunderstood. Mr. Fairfax,
observing his granddaughter, felt uneasy. Lady Latimer generalized to
stop the subject. Suddenly said Bessie, flashing at the rector, and
quoting Mr. Carnegie, "You attribute to class what belongs to
character." Then, out of her own irrepressible indignation, she added,
"Harry Musgrave is as good a gentleman as you are, and little Christie
too, though he may be only a carpenter's son." (Which was not saying
much for them, as Mr. Phipps remarked when he was told the story.)

Lady Latimer stood up and motioned to all the young people to come away.
They vanished in retiring, some one road, some another, and for the
next five minutes Bessie was left with my lady alone, angry and
exquisitely uncomfortable, but not half alive yet to the comic aspect of
her very original behavior. She glanced with shy deprecation in Lady
Latimer's face, and my lady smiled with a perfect sympathy in her
sensations.

"You are not afraid to speak up for an absent friend, but silence is the
best answer to such impertinences," said she, and then went on to talk
of Abbotsmead and Kirkham till Bessie was almost cheated of her
distressing self-consciousness.

Fairfield was a small house, but full of prettiness. Bessie Fairfax had
never seen anything so like a picture as the drawing-room, gay with
flowers, perfumed, airy, all graceful ease and negligent comfort. From a
wide-open glass door a flight of steps descended to the rose-garden, now
in its beauty. Paintings, mirrors decorated the walls; books strewed the
tables. There were a hundred things, elegant, grotesque, and useless, to
look at and admire. How vivid, varied, delicious life must be thus
adorned! Bessie thought, and lost herself a little while in wonder and
curiosity. Then she turned to Lady Latimer again. My lady had lost
herself in reverie too; her countenance had an