ould find
it hard to withstand. I used to ride with her, and flirt with her, and
bet with her, and play at her side in Monte Carlo, and let her fleece me
out of money, just as she did every one with whom she came in contact;
but after I knew Bessie, I broke with her mother entirely, and have
never played with her or any one since for money. You remember the
Christmas we spent together at Stoneleigh. You did not guess, perhaps,
how much I loved her then, or that I would have asked her to be my wife
if I had not been so poor. Then her father died, and you were there
before me, and I was horribly jealous, for I meant she should be mine.
There was nothing in the way, I thought. Poor Hal was dead, and had left
me his title and estate. I could pour some brightness into her weary
life, and two weeks after the funeral I went again to Stoneleigh and
asked her to marry me."

Jack paused a moment, and leaning forward eagerly, Grey said:

"Yes, you asked her to marry you, and she consented?"

"No; oh, no" Jack groaned, "If she had, she might not now have been
dead; my Bessie, whom I loved so much. She refused me, and worst of all,
she told me she was plighted to Neil, her cousin."

"To Neil! Bessie plighted to Neil! That is impossible, for he is to
marry Blanche Trevellian, so everybody says," Grey exclaimed, conscious
of a keener pang than he had experienced when he thought Jack his rival.

"And everybody is right," Jack replied: "he will marry Blanche, but he
was engaged to Bessie under the promise of strictest secrecy until his
mother, who had threatened to disinherit him, was reconciled, or he
found something which would support him without any effort on his part,
Neil McPherson would never exert himself, or deny himself either, even
for the woman he loved, and, Grey, I speak the truth when I tell you
that I would rather know that Bessie was dead than to see her Neil's
wife."

Grey did not answer, but something in the pallor of his face and the
expression of his eyes, struck Jack suddenly, and stretching his hand
across the table he said, very low and very sadly:

"Jerrold, you loved her, too. I see it in your face."

"Yes," Grey answered him, "I loved her, too, and would have given years
of my life to have saved her, though not for Neil. Better far as it
is--better for her, I mean, though our lives are wrecked; at least, mine
is; but for you there may still be a happy future, and on the ashes of
the dead love a new on