Harry with reticent coolness. "We
all thought her looking remarkably well."

"Yes, beautiful--very much improved indeed. My wife was quite
astonished, but she has been living in the very best society. And have
you seen Mr. Cecil Burleigh?"

Harry made answer that he had dined at Fairfield one evening, and had
met Mr. Cecil Burleigh there.

"Miss Fairfax's friends must be glad she is going to marry so well--so
suitably in every point of view. It is an excellent match, and, I
understand from Lady Latimer, all but settled. She is delighted, for
they are both immense favorites with her."

Harry Musgrave was dumb. Yet he did not believe what he heard--he could
not believe it, remembering Bessie's kind, pretty looks. Why, her very
voice had another, softer tone when she spoke to him; his name was music
from her lips. The rector went on, explaining the fame and anticipated
future of Mr. Cecil Burleigh in a vaguely confidential manner, until
they came to a spot where two ways met, and Harry abruptly said, "I was
going to Littlemire to call on Mr. Moxon, and this is my road." He held
out his hand, and was moving off when Mr. Wiley's visage put on a solemn
shade of warning:

"It will carry you through Marsh-End. I would avoid Marsh-End just now
if I were you--a nasty, dangerous place. The fever is never long absent.
I don't go there myself at present."

But Harry said there was a chance, then, that he might meet with his old
tutor in the hamlet, and he started away, eager to be alone and to
escape from the rector's observation, for he knew that he was betraying
himself. He went swiftly along under the sultry shade in a confused
whirl of sensations. His confidence had suddenly failed him. He had
counted on Bessie Fairfax for his comrade since he was a boy; the idea
of her was woven into all his pleasant recollections of the past and
all his expectations in the future. Since that Sunday evening in the old
sitting-room at Brook her sweet, womanly figure had been the centre of
his thoughts, his reveries. He had imagined difficulties, obstacles, but
none with her. This real difficulty, this tangible obstacle, in the
shape of Mr. Cecil Burleigh, a suitor chosen by her family and supported
by Lady Latimer, gave him pause. He could not affect to despise Mr.
Cecil Burleigh, but he vowed a vow that he would not be cheated of his
dear little Bessie unless by her own consent. Was it possible that he
was deceived in her--that he and s