shining, as she said to him:

"Neil, you do not know what you ask, or all it involves. I cannot leave
my father, and there is Blanche. You are as good as engaged to her; you
said so in your letter."

"I know I wrote you so," Neil said, "because I wanted to fortify myself
against doing just what I have done, but I shall never marry Blanche
Trevellian; if you tell me no, I shall remain single forever; but you
will not, Bessie. You will not destroy my last chance to be a man. You
do love me, I am sure, and you will love me more when you know all I
mean to do. I shall not separate you from your father. He shall live
with us, and Anthony and Dorothy too; though not here at Stoneleigh,
except it be in the summer when the roses are in bloom. Father has a
small house in London, in Warwick Crescent; he will let us live there,
and--and--"

Here Neil stopped, for he remembered his mother's threat of
disinheritance if he should marry Bessie, and he knew she was capable of
performing it and if she did how was he to live even in that small house
in Warwick Crescent? But Bessie's eyes were upon him; Bessie's upturned
face was between his hands, and poverty with her did not seem so very
terrible. They could manage some way, but he would be frank with her,
and, he continued, at last, "Bessie, I shall not deceive you, or pretend
that mother will receive you at first, for she will not. She means me to
marry Blanche, and will be very angry for a time, and perhaps refuse to
give me my present allowance, so we may be very poor; but that I shall
not mind if you are with me. Poverty will be sweet if shared with you,
who, I know, are not afraid of it."

"No, Neil," Bessie said, getting her face free from his hands, "I am not
afraid of poverty, and I do love you; but--"

"But what?" Neil cried, in alarm, as be caught her hands in his and held
them fast, "You are not going to tell me no? Surely you are not?"

"No, Neil. I am going to tell you nothing as yet. I was only thinking,
that if we are so poor, couldn't you do something? Couldn't you work?"

It was the same question put by the girl Daisy to the boy Archie years
before in the old yew-shaded garden, and as the boy Archie had then
answered the girl Daisy, so the man Neil now made reply:

"I am afraid not, my darling. It is not in the McPherson blood to work,
and I dare not be the first to break the rule."

"Don't you think Grey Jerrold would work if he were poor?" Bessie asked,
an