and
mouth, surveyed him a moment in astonishment; then a broad smile
illumined her face as she exclaimed:

"An' faith that's right. Kiss her again as many times as ye likes. It's
not meself will interfere, though if you'd been a bla'guard, as I
thought you was, I'd of had yer heart's blood," and turning on her heel
Jennie walked rapidly away, leaving the lovers a very little upset and
disconcerted.

It was Grey who wheeled Bessie back to the house, and taking her in his
arms carried her to his Aunt Lucy, to whom he said, as he put her down
upon the couch:

"This is my little wife, or, rather, she is to _be_ my wife on Christmas
Eve, and Christmas Day we are to spend here with you, who will make the
old house brighter than ever it was before." Then, going up to Miss
McPherson, he continued: "Kiss me, Aunt Betsey because I am to be your
nephew, and because I am no longer a fool."

The kiss he asked for was given, and thus the engagement was sealed,
and when next day Grey returned to Boston, he said to his Aunt Hannah,
who was still with his mother:

"Bessie is to be my wife, and I must tell her our secret, and at your
house, too, for, after she has seen you, I feel sure that she will
forgive everything."

CHAPTER XIV.

TELLING BESSIE.

At last Mrs. Geraldine was better, and signified her willingness to let
her sister-in-law return to her own home, from which she had been absent
so long. She had received, with a good deal of equanimity, the news of
her son's engagement with Bessie, whom she remembered as a lovely child,
wholly unlike her mother.

"If that woman were living, I would never consent to the marriage," she
said; "but as it is, I am willing, though I had hoped that in your
travels abroad you might have found some high-born English girl with a
title, but it is something to marry a niece of Lady Jane, and I dare say
Miss McPherson will make the girl her heir; so I will welcome her as my
daughter, and perhaps she will brighten up the house, which is at times
insufferably dull, with your father growing more and more silent and
gloomy every day. I should not wonder if he were to become crazy, like
your grandfather."

Grey did not reply to this, or tell her that he could guess in part what
it was which had made his father grow old so fast, and blanched his hair
to a snowy white, unusual to one of his years. It was the secret hidden
under the bed-room floor which had affected his whole life, and a