usual, and Mrs. Betts came to assist at her young
lady's toilet. Being dressed, Bessie descended to the octagon room,
which she found empty.

It was a fine, frosty night, and the sky was full of stars. She put
aside a curtain and looked out into the wintry garden, feeling more than
ever alone and desolate amidst the grandeur of her home. It seemed as if
the last unkindness she had suffered was the worst of all, and her heart
yearned painfully towards her friends in the Forest. Oh, for their
simple, warm affection! She would have liked to be sitting with her
mother in the old-fashioned dining-room at Beechhurst, listening for the
doctor's return and the clink of Miss Hoyden's hoofs on the hard frozen
road, as they had listened often in the winters long ago. She forgot
herself in that reverie, and scarcely noticed that the door had been
opened and shut again until her grandfather spoke from the hearth,
saying that Jonquil had announced dinner.

The amiable disposition in which the squire had come home appeared to
have passed off completely. Bessie had seen him often crabbed and
sarcastic, but never so irritable as he was that evening. Nothing went
right, from the soup to the dessert, and Jonquil even stirred the fire
amiss. Some matter in his correspondence had put him out. But as he made
no allusion to his grievance, Bessie was of course blind and deaf to his
untoward symptoms. The next day he went to Norminster to see Mr. John
Short, and came back in no better humor--in a worse humor if
possible--and Mrs. Stokes whispered to Bessie the explanation of it.

Mr. Fairfax had inherited a lawsuit with a small estate in Durham,
bequeathed to him by a distant connexion, and this suit, after being for
years a blister on his peace, had been finally decided against him. The
estate was lost, and the plague of the suit with it, but there were
large costs to pay and the time was inconvenient.

"Your grandfather contributed heavily to the election of Mr. Cecil
Burleigh in the prospect of an event which it seems is not to be,"
concluded the little lady with reproachful significance. "My Arthur told
me all about it (Mr. Fairfax consults him on everything); and now there
are I don't know how many thousands to pay in the shape of back rents,
interest, and costs, but it is an immense sum."

Bessie was sorry, very sorry, and showed it with so much sense and
sympathy that her grandfather presently revealed his vexations to her
himself,