es to Grey's Park
XIV. Telling Bessie
XV. Wedding Bells
XVI. Bessie's Fortune
XVII. Old Friends
XVIII. Home again
XIX. Joel Rogers' Monument
XX. After Five Years

BESSIE'S FORTUNE.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

THE JERROLDS OF BOSTON.

Mrs. Geraldine Jerrold, of Boston, had in her girlhood been Miss
Geraldine Grey, of Allington, one of those quiet, pretty little towns
which so thickly dot the hills and valleys Of New England. Her father,
who died before her marriage, had been a sea-captain, and a man of great
wealth, and was looked upon as a kind of autocrat, whose opinion was a
law and whose friendship was an honor. When a young lady, Miss Geraldine
had chafed at the stupid town and the stupider people, as she designated
the citizens of Allington, and had only been happy when the house at
Grey's Park was full of guests after the manner of English houses, where
hospitality is dispensed on a larger scale than is common in America.
She had been abroad, and had spent some weeks in Derbyshire at the
Peacock Inn, close to the park of Chatsworth, which she admired so much
that on her return to Allington she never rested until the five acres of
land, in the midst of which her father's house stood, were improved and
fitted up as nearly as possible like the beautiful grounds across the
sea. With good taste and plenty of money, she succeeded beyond her most
sanguine hopes, and Grey's Park was the pride of the town, and the
wonder of the entire county. A kind of show place it became, and Miss
Geraldine was never happier or prouder than when strangers were going
over the grounds or through the house, which was filled with rare
pictures and choice statuary gathered from all parts of the world, for
Captain Grey had brought something curious and costly from every port at
which his vessel touched, so that the house was like a museum, or, as
Miss Geraldine fancied, like the palaces and castles in Europe, which
are shown to strangers in the absence of the family.

At the age of twenty-two, Miss Geraldine had married Burton Jerrold, a
young man from one of the leading banks in Boston, and whose father,
Peter Jerrold, had, for years, lived on a small farm a mile or more from
the town of Allington. So far as Geraldine knew, the Jerrold blood was
as good as the Grey's, even if old Peter did live a hermit life and wear
a drab overcoat which must have dated back more years than she could
remember. No one had ever breath