"It sounds like tempting them to a wild-goose chase, Bessie. Yachts that are here to-day are gone to-morrow. By the time they arrive you may have sailed off to Cowes or to Yarmouth. But I will give your message. How came you on board a yacht?"
Bessie got no more information from the rector; he had the same catechising habit as his good wife, and wanted to know her news. She gave it freely, and then they were at the end of the pier, and there was the Hampton boat ringing its bell to start. "Are you going straight home? Will you tell them at once?" Bessie ventured to say again as Mr. Wiley went down the gangway.
"Yes. I expect to find the carriage waiting for me at Hampton," was the response.
"They might even come by the afternoon boat," cried Bessie as a last word, and the rector said, "Yes."
It was with a lightened heart and spirits exhilarated that Bessie retraced her steps up the pier. "It was such a good opportunity!" said she, congratulating herself.
"Yes, if the gentleman don't forget," rejoined Mrs. Betts.
But, alas! that was just what the gentleman did. He forgot until his remembering was too late to be of any purpose. He forgot until the next Sunday when he was in the reading-desk, and saw Mrs. Carnegie sitting in front of him with a restless boy on either hand. He felt a momentary compunction, but that also, as well as the cause of it, went out of his head with the end of his sermon, and the conclusion of the matter was that he never delivered the message Bessie had given him on Ryde pier at all.
Bessie, however, having a little confidence in him, unwittingly enjoyed the pleasures of hope all that day and the next. On the second evening she was a trifle downhearted. The morning after she awoke with another prospect before her eyes—a beautiful bay, with houses fringing its shores and standing out on its cliffs, and verdure to the water's edge. Mrs. Betts told her these villages were Sandown and Shanklyn. The yacht was scudding along at a famous rate. They passed Luccombe with its few cottages nestling at the foot of the chine, then Bonchurch and Ventnor. "It would be very pleasant living at sea in fine weather, if only one had what one wants," Bessie said.
The following day the yacht was off Ryde again, and Bessie went to walk on the pier in her close-fitting serge costume and glazed hat, feeling very barefaced and evident, she assured Mrs. Betts, who tried to convince her that the style of dress was exceedingly becoming to her, and made her appear taller. Bessie was, indeed, a very pretty middle height now, and her shining hair, clear-cut features, and complexion of brilliant health constituted her a very handsome girl.
Almost the first people she met were the Gardiners. "Mr. Cecil Burleigh went to London this morning," Miss Julia told her. The elder sister asked if she was coming to the flower-show in Appley Gardens in the afternoon or the regatta ball that night.