“Yes,” Jack answered him, unhesitatingly.  “I do not mind telling it to you.  I think I have loved her since I first saw her, a demure, old-fashioned little thing, in the funniest bonnet and dress you ever saw, sitting with her father, in Hyde Park, and looking at the passers-by.  I watched her for some time, wondering who she was, and then, at last, I ventured to speak to her, and standing by her chair told her who the people were, and found out who she was, and called upon her in Abingdon Road, and then she went away, but her face haunted me continually, and even the remembrance of it and of her helped me to a better life than I had lead before.  You knew her mother, or rather you knew of her.  Not the woman whom you saw in Rome, full of anxiety for her child, but a vain, selfish, intriguing woman, whom no good man could respect, much as he might admire her dazzling beauty.  Well, she had me on her string, when I met her daughter, but something Bessie said to me made me strong to resist coils and arts which Satan himself would find it hard to withstand.  I used to ride with her, and flirt with her, and bet with her, and play at her side in Monte Carlo, and let her fleece me out of money, just as she did every one with whom she came in contact; but after I knew Bessie, I broke with her mother entirely, and have never played with her or any one since for money.  You remember the Christmas we spent together at Stoneleigh.  You did not guess, perhaps, how much I loved her then, or that I would have asked her to be my wife if I had not been so poor.  Then her father died, and you were there before me, and I was horribly jealous, for I meant she should be mine.  There was nothing in the way, I thought.  Poor Hal was dead, and had left me his title and estate.  I could pour some brightness into her weary life, and two weeks after the funeral I went again to Stoneleigh and asked her to marry me.”

Jack paused a moment, and leaning forward eagerly, Grey said: 

“Yes, you asked her to marry you, and she consented?”

“No; oh, no” Jack groaned, “If she had, she might not now have been dead; my Bessie, whom I loved so much.  She refused me, and worst of all, she told me she was plighted to Neil, her cousin.”

“To Neil!  Bessie plighted to Neil!  That is impossible, for he is to marry Blanche Trevellian, so everybody says,” Grey exclaimed, conscious of a keener pang than he had experienced when he thought Jack his rival.

“And everybody is right,” Jack replied:  “he will marry Blanche, but he was engaged to Bessie under the promise of strictest secrecy until his mother, who had threatened to disinherit him, was reconciled, or he found something which would support him without any effort on his part, Neil McPherson would never exert himself, or deny himself either, even for the woman he loved, and, Grey, I speak the truth when I tell you that I would rather know that Bessie was dead than to see her Neil’s wife.”