“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, and Neil replied: 

“Grey is an American, and that makes a difference; every body works there, and it does not matter.”

“Then let us go to America and be Americans, too,” Bessie said, but Neil only shook his head, and replied: 

“I could never live in that half-civilized land of equality, where the future President may be buttoned up in the jacket of my bootblack.  I am an out-and-out aristocrat and would rather be poor and be jostled by nobility than be rich and brush against Tom, Dick and Harry and have to bow to their wives.”

Bessie gave a little sigh, for this was not at all like Grey Jerrold, whom Neil was going to imitate; but before she could speak, he continued: 

“We shall pull through somehow in London, and in time mother will come round when she finds I am determined.  So, Bessie, it is settled, and you promise to be my wife when I can fix things?”

He was taking his consent too much for granted, and Bessie did not like it, and said to him: 

“No, Neil; it is not settled for sure.  I can never be yours without your mother’s sanction.  Think what you would be taking upon yourself—­poverty, father and me!”

“The me would not be so very bad,” Neil said, drawing her closely to him, and caressing her hair as he talked, advancing argument after argument why she should consent to a secret engagement, the greatest argument of all being the influence such an engagement would have over him, helping him in his new resolution to be a man after the Grey Jerrold order; for Grey’s name was mentioned often in the strange plighting of vows, and when at last Bessie’s consent was won to be Neil’s wife as soon as his mother was reconciled, her mind was almost as full of Grey as it was of Neil, who, now that she was his, became the most tender and devoted lover during his remaining stay at Stoneleigh, and Bessie was happier than she had ever been in her life, though there was one drawback upon her happiness:  she would like to have told her father, but Neil had said she must not, and she obeyed, wondering to herself if Grey would have bound her to secrecy.