an help you. I heard at the
'George' of your father's illness, and came at once. Is he so very bad?"
And, leading her to a sofa and sitting down beside her, he continued:
"Tell me all your trouble, please, and what I can do for you."

Grey's voice was very low and soft, and had in it all the tenderness and
gentleness of a sympathizing woman, and it touched Bessie as Neil's
words of love could not have touched her had he been there beside her.
Bursting into a fresh fit of sobbing, she told Grey of her father's
serious illness, and her loneliness and desolation, and how glad she was
he had come.

"I telegraphed to Neil," she said, "and thought you were he, though it
is not time for him to be here, even if he received the telegram.
Perhaps he is not in London: do you know?"

Grey did not know, as he had not heard from Neil in some time; but he
comforted Bessie as well as he could, and said he hoped her father might
yet recover.

"No, he cannot," Bessie replied. "He will soon be dead, and I shall be
alone, all alone; for mother has gone to America with a Mrs.
Rossiter-Browne, who lives in or near Allington? You know her, I
believe," and Bessie looked up in time to see the look of surprise and
the half-amused smile which flitted over Grey's face as he replied:

"Mrs. Rossiter-Browne? Oh, yes, I know her. I have always known her. She
is a good, kind-hearted woman, and your mother is safe with her."

Bessie felt intuitively that Grey was keeping something back, which he
might have told her, but she respected him far more for speaking kindly
of Mrs. Rossiter-Browne than she would have done, if he had said, as he
might have done: "Oh, Yes, I know Mrs. Rossiter-Browne. She was for
years my Aunt Lucy's hired girl, Angeline Peters, who married Isaac
Brown, the hired man, and became plain Mrs. Ike Brown, until some lucky
speculation turned the tide and gave them immense wealth, when she
blossomed out into a fine lady, and, dropping the _Ike_, adopted her
husband's middle name, _Rossiter_, with a hyphen to heighten the effect,
and so became Mrs. Rossiter-Browne."

All this Bessie learned afterward, but now she was too full of grief to
care what Mrs. Rossiter-Browne had been, or what she was. All her
thoughts were with her father, whose weak voice was soon heard calling
to her:

"Bessie, are you here?"

"Yes, father," she said, going quickly into the sick-room, followed by
Grey, who saw in Archie's face the look which comes