lic opinion, or cast him
down to the depths, and if he said Bessie was not bold, nor
brazen-faced, then she was not, though Lady Jane and Blanche disliked
her just the same.

Neil, on the contrary, forgave her fully for the annoyance he had felt,
and immediately after breakfast the next morning he started for Mrs.
Buncher's. Bessie was trying on the hat when he entered. She had
received the box only a few moments before, and had readily guessed that
Neil was the donor, and had in part divined his motive.

"He was ashamed of my old gown and hat; and they are rather the worse
for the wear, and looked very shabby among the fine dresses in the park.
But they are the best I have, unless I make over those mother sent
me--and that I cannot do," she thought, as she remembered, with a pang,
the trunkful of half-worn garments of various kinds, which her mother
had sent her from time to time, and which she could never bring herself
to wear, because of the association. They had been worn in the moral
mire of Monte Carlo and other places equally disreputable, and Bessie
could no more have put them on than she could have adopted her mother's
habits. In her linen dress, which she bought with money paid her for
roses by the ladies who frequented the "George," she felt pure and
respectable. But this gift from Neil, her cousin, she surely might keep,
for her father said so, and, young-girl-like, she was admiring herself,
or rather the hat, before the glass, when Neil himself came in.

"Hallo, Dot," he said, coming quickly to her side. "At it, I see, like
the rest of your kind; but don't it become you, though! Why, you are
sweet and fresh this morning as a rose from the old Stoneleigh garden,"
and the tall young man stooped and kissed the blushing girl two or three
times before she could withdraw herself from him. "Why, Bess," he
continued, "what a lump of dignity you are this morning! You did not
used to wriggle so when I kissed you. What has happened?"

"Nothing has happened," Bessie replied, though she knew very well there
had, for what Jack Trevellian had told her that rumor said of Neil and
Blanche had opened a new channel of thought, and made her older far than
she was before; too old for Neil to be kissing her as if she were a
child.

And then, if what Jack said was true, he had no right to kiss her, even
if she were his cousin. But was it true? She wished she knew, and after
she had thanked Neil for the dress, and asked if he