"You had better not; father and I are out so much that we might not be home, and you would have your trouble for nothing. Good-by again."
She took her father's arm and walked away, while Jack Trevellian stood looking after her and thinking to himself:
"That girl has the loveliest face I ever saw. It is so full of sweetness, and patience, and pathos, that you want to take her in your arms and pity her, and make much of her, as a child who has been hurt and wants soothing. She is even prettier than Flossie. By Jove, if the coronet were mine, and the money, I'd make that girl my lady as sure as my name is Jack. Lady Bessie Trevellian! It sounds well, and what a sensation she would make in society. But what a mother-in-law for a man to be saddled with. Welsh Daisy! Bah!" and with thoughts not very complimentary to Daisy, he left the park and walked rapidly along Piccadilly toward Grosvenor Square and Trevellian House.
CHAPTER VII.
NEIL'S DISCOMFORTURE.
Meanwhile Neil was driving on in no very enviable frame of mind. Bessie's startling demonstration had annoyed him more than he liked to confess. Why had she made such a spectacle of herself? and how oddly she had looked standing there in that old linen gown with her hat hanging down her back—and such a hat! He had noticed it in the gardens and thought it quite out of style, and had even detected that the ribbons had been ironed! But he did not think as much about it, or her gown either, when he was alone with her, as he did now when there was all his world to see and Blanche to criticise, as she did unsparingly.
"I thought you once told me she was very pretty," she said: "but I think her a fright in that dowdy dress, and bare-headed, too! Did it to show her hair, no doubt! There is probably some of her mother's nature in her."
Neil could have sworn, he was so angry with Blanche and with all the world, especially Bessie, who had got him into this mess. He tried to make himself believe that he had intended to take Bessie and her father for a drive in the park, but he should not do it now. Probably the linen gown was the only one Bessie had brought with her, and the elegant Neil McPherson, who thought so much of one's personal appearance and what Mrs. Grundy would say, could not face the crowd with that gown at his side, even if Bessie were in it. She would never know it, perhaps, but she had lost her chances with Neil, who nevertheless, hated himself for his foolish pride, and when the drive, which he shortened as much as possible, was over, he left Blanche to go home alone, and taking a cab drove straight to Oxford street and bought a lovely navy-blue silk and a pretty chip hat, with a wreath of eglantines around it. These he ordered sent to Bessie, at No. —— Abingdon road, and then, feeling that he was a pretty good fellow after all, he started for home, where to his surprise, he found his cousin Jack.
"Why, Jack!" he exclaimed; "I thought you were in Ireland! When did you return?"