imperfect that your father begs me, the next time I
engage a scullery-wench, to ascertain that she is not infected with the
offensive pious conceit that distinguishes poor Eliza. Our own dear
children are affectionate and good, on the whole. Jack has made up his
mind to the sea, and Willie professes that he will be a doctor, like
his father; he could not be better. They are both at Hampton School yet,
but we have them over for Sunday while the summer weather continues."

When Bessie had heard the family news and all about the children, she
had to tell her own, and very interesting her mother found it. She had
to answer numerous questions concerning Mr. Laurence Fairfax, his wife
and boys, and then Mrs. Carnegie inquired about that fine gentleman of
whose pretensions to Miss Fairfax Lady Latimer had warned her. Bessie
blushed rather warmly, and told what facts there were to tell, and she
now learnt for the first time that her wooing was a matter of
arrangement and policy. The information was not gratifying, to judge
from the hot fire of her face and the tone of her rejoinder. "Mr. Cecil
Burleigh is a fascinating person--so I am assured--but I don't think I
was the least bit in love," she averred with energetic scorn. Her mother
smiled, and did not say so much in reply as Bessie thought she might.

Presently they went into the orchard, and insensibly the subject was
renewed. Bessie remembered afterward saying many things that she never
meant to say. She mentioned how she had first seen Mr. Cecil Burleigh at
the Fairfield wedding devoted to a most lovely young lady whom she had
seen again at Ryde, and had known as Miss Julia Gardiner. "I thought
they were engaged," she said. "I am sure they were lovers for a long
while."

"You were under that impression throughout?" Mrs. Carnegie suggested
interrogatively.

"Yes. From the day I saw them together at Ryde I had no other thought.
He was grandpapa's friend, grandpapa forwarded his election for
Norminster, and as I was the young lady of the house at Abbotsmead, it
was not singular that he should be kind and attentive to me, was it? I
am quite certain that he was as little in love with me as I was with
him, though he did invite me to be his wife. I felt very much insulted
that he should suppose me such a child as not to know that he did not
care for me; it was not in that way he had courted Miss Julia Gardiner."

"It is a much commoner thing than you imagine for a man to be