to do with a part of it at least. She was
sitting alone with Grey around the bright fire in the drawing-room one
evening after their late dinner, and Grey was saying to her, as she sat
on a low stool at his side, leaning her head on his knee and holding his
hand in hers:

"It will soon be two years since I first saw you, with your face against
the window, looking out into the darkness at the big American. I dare
say you wished me in Guinea."

"That I did," Bessie answered laughingly, as she deepened her clasp of
his hand, "for I did not at all know what to do with you."

"But I remember well that you gave up your own cozy bedroom, like the
dear, unselfish little girl you are," Grey said, and Bessie rejoined.

"Yes, but I hope you remember, too, that you would not take it, and,
pretending to have the asthma, said you preferred the north chamber,
with the storm and the cold and the rats. Oh, Grey, honestly I did not
want you here one bit. I thought you would be in the way but I am so
glad now, for if you had not come I might never have been your wife,"
and Bessie nestled closer to the arm which was her rightful
resting-place, and which encircled her fondly, as Grey replied a little
teasingly:

"No, not my wife perhaps, but you might have been Neil's, eh?"

"No, Grey, if I had not met you, I could not have married Neil. I once
thought I loved him, it is true, but I know now I did not. We were so
unlike we could never have been happy. But I like him very much and am
sorry for him, if he really cared for me. I wonder what he will say when
he hears I am married and am here in Wales. He did not even know I was
engaged. I think you ought to write and tell him, and perhaps invite him
here for the holidays. Do you think he would care to come?"

"No, Bessie. Neither would I care to have him," Grey replied. "I would
rather spend the first Christmas alone with you in the place where I
first saw you; but I am willing to write to Neil, and when we go to
London I will find him of course, and you shall see him."

"Thank you, Grey," Bessie said, just as Dorothy came in with a letter
for her mistress, who took it in her hand and bending to the firelight
recognized Neil's hand-writing, while her cheeks flushed as she saw her
new name, Mrs. Grey Jerrold, and thought that Neil was the first to
address her thus.

Breaking the seal, she read as follows:

"LONDON, December ----, 18--.

"My Dear Cousin: You may think it str