r plans.

"Forever and ever yours,

"Neil."

"P.S.--I saw Jack Trevellian the other day, and told him you were
married. For a minute he was as white as a piece of paper; then he
rallied, and asked a great many questions about you. It seems be
thought that you died in Rome when you were so sick there, and he
says Grey thought so, too. Jack did not know to the contrary until
one day last summer, when Flossie Meredith met him in the streets in
Paris and told him you were in America. Jack is growing stout, and
looks quite the landed proprietor. He keeps a lot of hounds, and has
invited me to visit him. But I am done with things of that sort.
Again good-by.

"P.S. No. 2.--I have had my tea with father, and when I told him I
had been writing to you, he bade me give you his love, and say, that
he should very much like to see you and your husband, and that if
you are not coming to London, he will go to Stoneleigh, where he has
never been since your grandfather died. This, I take it, is right
shabby in him. But father is greatly changed. Between you and me, he
was awfully afraid of mother. Poor mother, she meant well, and she
was fond of me.

"By the way, Flossie is in London, with her grandmother, stopping at
Langham's, and Jack is there, too, and has asked the old lady to
spend some weeks at Trevellian Castle. It is frightfully lonesome
there, he says, and he wants Flossie to brighten it up. Can you read
between the lines? I think I can. Flossie is bright as a button.

"Again yours, forever,

"Neil."

Bessie read the letter, and then, passing it to her husband, said:

"It is from Neil. Would you like to see it?"

Taking it from her, Grey read it through, and then, leaning back in his
chair, watched Bessie, as, with her elbows on her knees, and her face
resting on her hands, she sat gazing intently into the fire with a
wistful, earnest look which puzzled him a little. Was she thinking of
the two men who had loved her so much and one of whom loved her still?
And was she sending a regret after the title she had lost? He did not
believe so; and, after a moment, he reached out his hand, and laying it
caressingly upon her soft, wavy hair, said to her:

"What is it, _petite_? Are you thinking how you might have been Lady
Bessie Trevellian?"

Then she turned her clear, truthful blue eyes upon him and answered: