ed to you."

"Oh, Bessie, how could you have been so indiscreet. Now the news must
reach mother, and my life will be a burden to me," Neil exclaimed, with
so much severity in his tone that Bessie shrank a little from him as she
replied:

"I had to tell him, Neil. There was no other way to make him believe I
meant it, he was so much in earnest. He will not repeat it. He has too
much honor in his nature for that. He is one of the best and noblest men
I ever knew."

Bessie was very earnest in her defense of Jack, and Neil grew angry at
once.

"Maybe you prefer him to me?" he said. "By Jove, I do not blame you if
it is so. You'd better be Lady Trevellian, with plenty of money, than
plain Mrs. Neil McPherson, not knowing where I the next meal is to come
from. Say the word and I will set you free, though it breaks my heart to
do it."

No wonder if Bessie felt that Neil's presence was productive of more
pain than pleasure, or if for a moment she felt keenly the contrast
between his manner and Jack's. But Neil's mood soon changed, and winding
his arm around her, and kissing her fondly, he called himself a brute
and a savage to wound her so, and talked of their future, when he could
be always with her, and worked himself up to the point of proposing
marriage at once--a private marriage, of course, which must be kept
secret for an indefinite length of time, during which she would live at
Stoneleigh, and he would visit her often. But Bessie shrank from this
proposal, and when Neil asked what she was to do there alone, she
answered that she could do very well until her mother came, and then
they would manage together somehow on the little there was left, and if
nothing better offered she could go out as governess to small children.
But this plan Neil repudiated with scorn. His wife must never be a
governess, never earn her own bread! The idea was preposterous; and
then he talked of the bright future before them if they waited
patiently, and how happy he would make her; and in the morning he left
her and went back to London, and she was alone again, and looking
anxiously forward to news from her mother, and the day after Neil left a
letter came from Daisy with the blackest and deepest of borders, and
Bessie opened it eagerly to learn where she was, and when she was coming
home.

CHAPTER XXI.

WHAT DAISY DID.

She flirted with every man on the ship who would flirt with her. Even
Allen Browne was not insensible to