When Bessie had heard the family news and all about the children, she had to tell her own, and very interesting her mother found it. She had to answer numerous questions concerning Mr. Laurence Fairfax, his wife and boys, and then Mrs. Carnegie inquired about that fine gentleman of whose pretensions to Miss Fairfax Lady Latimer had warned her. Bessie blushed rather warmly, and told what facts there were to tell, and she now learnt for the first time that her wooing was a matter of arrangement and policy. The information was not gratifying, to judge from the hot fire of her face and the tone of her rejoinder. "Mr. Cecil Burleigh is a fascinating person--so I am assured--but I don't think I was the least bit in love," she averred with energetic scorn. Her mother smiled, and did not say so much in reply as Bessie thought she might. Presently they went into the orchard, and insensibly the subject was renewed. Bessie remembered afterward saying many things that she never meant to say. She mentioned how she had first seen Mr. Cecil Burleigh at the Fairfield wedding devoted to a most lovely young lady whom she had seen again at Ryde, and had known as Miss Julia Gardiner. "I thought they were engaged," she said. "I am sure they were lovers for a long while." "You were under that impression throughout?" Mrs. Carnegie suggested interrogatively. "Yes. From the day I saw them together at Ryde I had no other thought. He was grandpapa's friend, grandpapa forwarded his election for Norminster, and as I was the young lady of the house at Abbotsmead, it was not singular that he should be kind and attentive to me, was it? I am quite certain that he was as little in love with me as I was with him, though he did invite me to be his wife. I felt very much insulted that he should suppose me such a child as not to know that he did not care for me; it was not in that way he had courted Miss Julia Gardiner." "It is a much commoner thing than you imagine for a man to be unable to marry as his heart would dictate. But he is not for that to remain single all his life, is he?" said Mrs. Carnegie. "Perhaps not; I should respect him more if he did. I will remain single all my life unless I find somebody to love me first and best," said Bessie with the airy assurance of the romantic age. "Well, dear, and I trust you may, for affection is the great sweetener of life, and it must be hard getting along without it. But here is father." Mr. Carnegie, his nap over, had seen his wife and Bessie from the study-window. He drew Bessie's hand through his arm and asked what they were so earnest in debate upon. Not receiving an immediate answer, he went on to remark to his wife that their little Bessie was not spoilt by her life among her high-born friends. "For anything I can see, she is our dear Bessie still." "So she is, Thomas--self-will and her own opinion and all," replied her mother, looking fondly in her face.