lifting her
tenderly in her strong arms, and sometimes walking with her up and down
the large chamber into which she had been carried when the physician
said her sickness might be of weeks' duration, for she was suffering
from all the fatigue and worry of the last two years, when the strain
upon her nerves had been so great.

All through the remaining weeks of summer, and the September days which
followed, Bessie lay in her bed, scarcely noticing any thing which was
passing around her, and saying to her aunt when she bent over her,
asking how she felt:

"Tired, so tired, and it is nice to rest."

And so the days went by, and everybody in Allington became interested in
the young girl whom few had seen, but of whom a great deal was told by
Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, whose carriage often stood at Miss McPherson's
door, bringing sometimes the lady herself, and sometimes Augusta, who
had returned from Saratoga, and was busy with the preparations for her
wedding, which was to take place in October.

Lord Hardy, who had come from the West, and established himself at the
Ridge House, called several times and left his card, which Miss
McPherson promptly burned.

She did not like Lord Hardy. He was just a fortune-hunter, she said, and
cared no more for Augusta Browne than he did for her, except that
Augusta was the younger of the two, and she could not forget how he had
looked, smirking and mincing by the side of Archie's wife at
Aberystwyth; poor, weak Daisy, who, but for him, might not have gone so
far astray as she did.

For Bessie's sake Miss McPherson was almost ready to forgive poor Daisy,
as she always called her now when thinking of her. For Bessie's sake she
felt that she could do a great deal that was contrary to her nature, but
she could not feel kindly disposed toward Neil, for immediately after
the receipt of her letter to his mother, containing two hundred and
fifty pounds, and the announcement that she intended to take Bessie as
her own child, Neil had written her a long, penitent letter, blaming
himself as a coward, and telling of his remorse and regret for the past,
and saying that, unless he was forbidden to do so, he should come to
America in September, and renew his offer to Bessie.

This letter Miss McPherson read with sundry expressions of disgust, and
then, taking from its peg her sun-hat, almost as large as a small
umbrella, she started for the telegraph office, and several hours later
Neil McPherson,