conscious of the blow which had fallen
so suddenly upon her, to heed what was passing around her.

Grey was going to be married; _her Gray_, whom she now knew that she
loved as she had never loved Neil McPherson even in the first days of
her engagement, when he was all the world to her. Her Grey, who
certainly had loved her once, or he would never have said to her what he
did. Her Grey, who had been so kind to her on the ship and looked the
love he did not speak. Why had he changed so soon? Was it some love of
his boyhood before he saw her, and had it again sprung into being, now
that he had returned to its object? And oh, how dreary the world looked
to the young girl with the certainty that Grey was lost to her forever.
She did not notice the fanciful summer-house into which Jennie wheeled
her; did not notice anything, or think of anything except her desolation
and a desire to be alone, that she might cry just as she had never cried
before.

"Please, Jennie, go away," she said; "I would rather be alone."

So Jennie left her, and, covering her face with her hands, Bessie
sobbed, piteously:

"Oh, Father in heaven, is there never to be any joy for me? Must I
always be so desolate and lonely, and is it wicked to wish that I were
dead?"

For several minutes poor Bessie wept on, and then with a great effort
she dried her tears, and, leaning her head back in her chair, began to
live over again every incident of her life as connected with Grey
Jerrold. And while she sat there thus, the Boston train stopped at the
Allington station, and she heard the roar and the ring as it started on
its way. Twenty minutes later she heard behind her the sound of a
footstep, apparently hurrying toward her, and thought, if she thought at
all, that it was Jennie coming for her. But surely Jennie's tread was
never so rapid and eager as this, nor were Jennie's hands as soft and
warm as the hands which encircled her face, nor Jennie's voice like this
which said to her:

"Bessie, darling Bessie!"

Grey had come to Allington from Springfield, where he had been on
business for his father, and both Lucy and Miss McPherson knew that he
was coming, and had chosen that day for Bessie's visit to the park, and
had purposely talked before her of his probable marriage, in order to
test the nature of Bessie's feelings for him.

"We cannot be mistaken," Miss McPherson said to Lucy, after Bessie had
left them; "but let me manage the young man."

And