fax was charming, she was _so_ happy. She was
good and gracious again to Mr. Cecil Burleigh, and she was never
prettier. He basked in her content, without trying to understand
it--thought more than ever what a buoyant, sweet-tempered woman she
would be, to give a man rest and refreshment at home, whose active life
must be spent in the arid ways of the political world. Dora had her
conjectures, and whispered them, but Bessie made no revelation, gave no
confidences.

It must be _ages_ before her league with Harry Musgrave could be
concluded, and therefore let it be still, as it had been always,
suspected, but not confessed--unless she were over-urged by Harry's
rival and her northern kinsfolk and friends. Then she would declare her
mind, but not before. Lady Latimer asked no questions. Her woman's
discernment was not at fault, but she had her own opinion of youthful
constancy and early loves and early vows, and believed that when they
were not to be approved they were to be most judiciously ignored.

The next day was so fully occupied with engagements made beforehand that
Bessie had no chance of going again to Beechhurst, but she did not make
a grief of it--she could not have made a grief of anything just then. On
the last morning, however, to her dear surprise, the doctor stopped at
the door for a parting word of her mother's love and his own, and their
hopes that she would soon be coming amongst them again; and when she
went away an hour later she went as joyous as she had come, though she
knew that a report of her untoward behavior had gone before her, and
that the probabilities were she would enter into an atmosphere of clouds
the moment she reached Abbotsmead.

But it did not prove so. Lady Latimer had written cautiously and
kindly--had not been able to give any assurance of Mr. Cecil Burleigh's
success, but had a feeling that it must come to pass. Elizabeth was a
sweet girl, though she had the self-will of a child; in many points she
was more of a child than my lady had supposed--in her estimate of
individuals, and of their weight and position in the world, for
instance--but this was a fault that knowledge of the world would cure.

Mr. Fairfax was pleased to welcome his granddaughter home again, and
especially pleased to see no sadness in her return. The Forest was ever
so much nearer now--not out of her world at all. Bessie had travelled
that road once, and would travel it again. Every experience shortens
such