en Bessie would be his wife and he disinherited, for her sake.
Once he calculated the possibility of living at Stoneleigh on the meagre
annuity which he knew Archie received, and which would die with him. But
he could not do that, and he called himself a sneak for considering the
matter an instant.

"If there was something I could do which would not compromise me," he
thought. "I might become an inventor, or an author. I could do better at
that, for I have some talent for yarning, they say. Wilkie Collins and
George Eliot make heaps of money with their pens. Yes, I believe I'll
try it."

And so Neil shut himself in his room for some hours each day, and
commenced the story which was to make his fortune. But as Bessie sat for
his heroine and Grey Jerrold for his hero, he became furiously jealous
when he reached the love passages, and tearing up his manuscript in
disgust, abandoned the field of authorship forever.

Suddenly his thoughts turned to the old aunt in America, whom, his fancy
painted as fabulously rich. She could help him, and perhaps if he wrote
her the right kind of a letter she would. And so he set himself to the
task, which proved harder, even, than the story-writing had been. Neil
knew his Aunt Betsey was very eccentric, and he hardly knew how to make
her under stand him without saying too much and so ruining his cause.

"By Jove, I'll tell her the truth, that I want money in order to marry
Bessie," he said, and he took Bessie for his starting paint, and waxed
eloquent as he described her sweetness and beauty, and told of her life
of toil and care and self-denial at Stoneleigh, with her father, whom he
represented as just on the verge of the grave. Then he told of his
engagement and his mother's fierce opposition to it, and the sure
poverty which awaited him if he remained true to his cousin, as he meant
to do, and then he came to the real object of his letter, and asked for
money on which to live until his mother was reconciled, as she was sure
to be in time, when she knew how lovely and good Bessie was. A few
thousand pounds would suffice, he said, as he knew his father would
allow him to occupy a house in Warwick Crescent which belonged to him
and which would save his rent. And then, growing bolder as he advanced,
he hinted at the possibility that his aunt might be intending to make
Bessie her heir, and said if it were so he should be glad to know it,
and would keep the secret religiously from Bessie