when, at last, Grey came, and, after greeting the ladies, asked
after Bessie, Miss McPherson replied that she was better and had just
left them for the garden; and then, as Grey made no move to go in search
of her, she suddenly turned upon him with the exclamation:

"Grey Jerrold, you are a fool!"

"Ye-es?" he answered, interrogatively, as he regarded her with
astonishment.

"I repeat it--you are either a fool or blind, or both!" she continued.
"But I am neither, and I know you love my niece, and she loves you, and
I know too that you think she is engaged to Neil McPherson, but she is
not."

"What!" Grey exclaimed, starting to his feet. "What are you saying?"

"I am saying that Bessie's engagement was broken before she left
England, and that she--"

"She--what?" Grey cried, almost pleadingly; and Miss McPherson rejoined:

"She is in the garden. You will find her in the rose-arbor."

Grey waited for no more, but went rapidly in the direction of the
summer-house where Bessie sat with her back to him, and did not see him
until his hands were upon her face and his voice said to her:

"Bessie, darling Bessie!"

Then she started suddenly, and when Grey came round in front of her, and
taking her hands in his kissed her lips, she kissed him unhesitatingly,
and then burst into a paroxysm of tears.

"What is it, Bessie? Why are you crying so?" Grey said, as he still held
her hands and kept kissing her forehead and lips.

"They said you were going to be married," Bessie sobbed, as Grey knelt
beside her, and laying her head upon his shoulder, tried to brush her
tears away.

"Who said I was to be married?" he asked, in some surprise, and Bessie
answered him:

"Your Aunt Lucy said she thought so, and I--oh, Grey, what must you
think of me?" and lifting her head from his shoulder, Bessie covered her
face with her hands, crying for very shame that she had betrayed what
she ought to have kept to herself.

"What must I think of you?" Grey replied. "Why, this--that you are the
dearest, sweetest little girl in all the world, and that I am the
happiest man. I do not know what Aunt Lucy meant by saying I was going
to be married; but I am, and very soon, too--just as soon as you are
able to be present at the ceremony. Will that be at Christmas-time, do
you think?"

He was taking everything for granted, and Bessie knew that he was, and
knew what he meant, but she would scarcely have been a woman if she had
not wished him