“I do not want your answer to-day, little girl,” he went on. “Take a week to consider it, if you require that length of time, and in the meantime, talk it over with Mrs. Bryson, or any one else who has your true interest at heart. Will you do this?” Jess could not find it in her heart to refuse this request to the man who had risked his own life to save hers. “I am going to run down to New Orleans for a few days,” he continued, “and when I return you can have your answer ready for me.” Early that forenoon he took his leave, promising Mrs. Bryson that he would be back by the end of the week. After he had gone, Jess made a clean breast of what had occurred, and the fact that she was to give Mr. Dinsmore his answer when he returned as to whether she would marry him or not, to Mrs. Bryson, who expressed herself as delighted that he had thought so well of her as to propose, a remark which Jess did not relish, as it savored of the idea in her mind that the old housekeeper considered the handsome Mr. Dinsmore very much above her--a thought which she greatly resented. From the moment in which she divulged the secret which she had concluded at first not to tell to any one, Mrs. Bryson gave her no peace. Every hour in the day she dinned into the girl’s ears the practicability of her union with Mr. Dinsmore, which her benefactor, the young man’s uncle, had foreseen, and so earnestly desired. It was all Jess heard from morning until night; she had it for breakfast, luncheon and dinner, until she fairly grew irritable at the sound of the name of Dinsmore, and hated the bearer of it, despite the fact that he had rendered her so valuable a service. She could find no peace until she had in a fit of desperation promised Mrs. Bryson that it should be as she wished--she would say yes to Mr. Dinsmore when he returned, and that the wedding should take place whenever he desired. “I knew you could not be so insane as to throw over such a fortune, together with such a nice young husband,” declared the housekeeper, with a sigh of great relief, “for few young girls would have been mad enough to refuse him. I shudder to think what the result would have been had he taken you at your word and committed suicide, or gone off and married somebody else. Why, you would simply have been a beggar, Jess; thrust out at once upon the cold mercies of the world; for, according to the will, Blackheath Hall, and all of his other possessions, would have been sold within a few months, and the great fortune would have gone to charities.” “I see how it is,” said Jess, dryly; “you would lose a good home and fine income--that is where your great interest lies, Mrs. Bryson.” The old housekeeper flushed a fiery red: she knew what Jess said was quite true. She was considering her own interests when she urged this marriage, but it was not pleasant to hear the truth dragged unmercifully forward, and when it was just as well that it should be hidden.