lf beside himself. His mother had wished him to accompany her and
Blanche to the house of a friend near Edinburgh, and when he refused,
saying he preferred to go to Stoneleigh, there had been a jolly row, as
he expressed it, and his mother had charged him with his preference for
the daughter of that bold adventuress, and had told him decidedly that
if he ever dared to marry her he should never touch a shilling of her
money either during her life-time or after, for once assured of the
marriage she would so arrange her matters that he would be as great a
beggar as Archie McPherson himself.

"A family of paupers!" she said, scornfully. "Your father has nothing to
give you; absolutely nothing, and you can yourself judge, how, with your
tastes and habits, you will like living at Stoneleigh with two meals a
day, as I hear they sometimes do, blacking your own boots and building
your own fires."

Here Neil winced, for he knew very well that he had no fancy for
poverty, even if Bessie shared it with him But he told his mother he
had, and consigned Blanche's ten thousand a year to a place where the
gold might be melted, and said he loved Bessie McPherson better than
anything in life, and should marry her if he pleased in spite of a
hundred mothers. But he knew he should not--knew he could not face the
reality when it came to the point. He was too dependent upon what wealth
would bring him to throw it away for one girl, even if that girl were
Bessie, whom he loved with all the intensity of his selfish
nature--loved so much that for an hour or so after his interview with
his mother, he balanced the two questions, Blanche with ten thousand a
year, or Bessie with nothing. Naturally Blanche turned the scale, and
then to himself, he said:

"I will go to Stoneleigh and live for a few days in Bessie's presence,
and then I will say good-by forever and marry Blanche as mother wishes
me to do. She is not so very bad except for her eyebrows and that horrid
drawl. But Bessie, oh, Bessie, how can I give her up!" and the young
man's heart cried out in pain for the sweet young girl he had loved all
his life, and who, he was sure loved him. To do Neil justice, this was
the bitterest drop in the cup--the knowing that Bessie, too, would
suffer. "She has enough to bear," he said, "without an added drop from
me, I wish she would get in love with some one else and throw me
overboard. I believe I could bear it better. There's Jack he was
awfully swe