urt
her; then, as she saw him consulting his watch, she said: "Oh, Neil,
can't I walk with you just a little way? Father never goes out after
tea, and I do so long for some fresh air."

Neil looked at his watch again. It was almost six, and at seven there
was a grand dinner at Trevellian house, at which he was expected to be
present. But Bessie's blue eyes and eager face drove everything else
from his mind, and he was soon walking with her in the lovely Kensington
gardens, and her hand was on his arm, and his hand was on hers, and in
watching her bright face and listening to her quaint remarks, he forgot
how fast the minutes were going by, and the grand dinner at home waited
for him a quarter of an hour, and then the guests sat down without him
and Lady Jane's face wore a dark, stormy look, when the son of the house
appeared smiling, handsome, and gracious, and apologizing for his
tardiness by saying frankly that he was in the garden, and forgot the
lapse of time.

"You must have been greatly interested. You could not have been alone,"
Blanche said to him in an undertone.

"No, I was not alone," he replied, with great frankness. "I was with the
prettiest girl in London, or out of it, either."

"And pray who may she be?" Blanche asked.

"My cousin Bessie. She arrived yesterday," was Neil's reply.

"Oh!" and Blanche's face flushed with annoyance.

She remembered the beautiful child at Penrhyn Park, and had heard her
name so often since, that the mere mention of it was obnoxious to her,
and she was silent and sulky all through the long dinner, which lasted
until nine o'clock. When it was over, and the guests were gone. Lady
Jane turned fiercely upon her son and asked what had kept him so late.

"Cousin Bessie," he answered, "She is in the city with her father, at
No. ---- Abingdon road, and I wish you would call upon them. They really
ought to be staying here, our own blood relations as they are."

"Staying here? Not if I know myself. Is that detestable gambling woman
with them?" Lady Jane replied, with ineffable scorn.

"No," Neil answered her. "She is never with them, and Bessie is no more
like her than you are. She is the purest, and sweetest and best girl I
ever knew, and I do not think it would hurt you or Blanche either to pay
her some attention;" and having said so much, the young man left the
room in time to escape Blanche's tears and his mother's anger and
reproaches.

The next day Neil was in a penit