were very angry with
her the day before for trying to attract his attention, and he had
assured her that he was not, she burst out:

"Oh, Neil, is it true you are to marry Miss Blanche? Mr. Jack Trevellian
stood by us yesterday and told me who the people were, and he said--"

"Jack be hanged!" Neil interrupted her. "What business has he to talk
such nonsense to you? Marry Blanche? Never! What do I want of those
light eyebrows and that pointed chin--I, who know you?"

Here he stopped, struck by something in Bessie's face which seemed to
brighten and beautify it until it shone like the face of some pure saint
to whom the gate of Paradise has just been opened. Then it occurred to
Neil suddenly that Bessie was not a child. She was a girl of fifteen and
more, with an experience which made her older than her years; and,
selfish as he was, and much as he would like to have her look at him
always as she was looking now, he felt that he must not encourage it. He
had told her he should never marry Blanche, but in his heart he thought
it possible, for, as there was no money in his own family, and he could
not exist without it, he must marry money and forget the sweet face and
soft blue eyes which moved him with a strange power and made him long to
fold Bessie in his arms, and, young as she was, claim her as something
more than a cousin. But, always politic and cautious, he restrained
himself, and said to her instead:

"I do not believe I shall ever marry anybody, certainly not for many
years, and you and I will be the best of friends always, brother and
sister, which is better than cousins. Do you consent?"

"Yes," Bessie answered, falteringly, not quite understanding him, or
knowing whether she should like the brother and sister arrangement as
well as the cousin.

Then they talked together of what Bessie had seen in the park, and she
told him all Jack Trevellian had said, and how kind he was, and how much
she liked him, until Neil felt horribly jealous of his cousin, and
wished he had staid in Ireland while Bessie was in London.

"Oh, it must be so fine to drive in a handsome carriage with the crowd.
I wish I could try it. Does it cost so very much?" she asked, and Neil
detested himself because he did not at once offer to take her and her
father for the coveted drive.

"Could he do it?" he asked himself many times, deciding finally that he
could not face his fashionable friends, and, more than all, his mother
and Blanch