Truly, she had much to learn. But she did not seem at all impressed now, or embarrassed either, though she looked at him more closely and decided that he resembled Neil, but was not nearly so good-looking, and that he was awfully old.
"You know my cousin Blanche, of course," he said to her next. "You must have seen her when you visited at Neil's father's."
"I saw her at Penrhyn Park when I was a child, but not since then until this afternoon. I was never at Trevellian House," Bessie said, and with the mental decision: "Poor relations who are outside the ring," Jack Trevellian continued: "She is not a beauty, though a great heiress. Rumor says Neil is engaged to her."
"Neil engaged! No, he isn't. He would have told me; he tells me everything; he is not engaged," Bessie said, quickly, while a keen sense of pain thrilled every nerve as she thought what it would be to lose Neil as he would be lost if he married the proud Blanche.
He was so much to her; something more than a brother, something less than a lover, for she was too young to think of such an ending to her friendship for him, and her heart beat rapidly and her lips quivered as she arose on the instant to go.
"Come, father, I think we have staid long enough. You must be tired," she said to her father; then turning to Jack, who was thinking: "Is the child in love with Neil? What a pity!" she said to him: "Thank you, Mr. Trevellian, for telling me who the people were. It was very kind in you. I will tell Neil I met you. Good-by," and she gave him her ungloved hand, which, though small and plump and well formed, showed that it was not a stranger to work.
Dishwashing, sweeping, dusting, bed making, and many other more menial things it had done at intervals to save old Dorothy, the only female domestic at Stoneleigh. But it was a very pretty hand for all that, and Jack Trevellian felt a great desire to squeeze it as it lay in his broad palm. But he did not, for something in Bessie's eyes forbade anything like liberty with her, and he merely said: "I was very glad to tell you. I wish I could do something more for you while you stay in London. Perhaps you will let me call upon you--with Neil," he added, as he saw a flush in Bessie's face.
She was thinking of the old hair cloth furniture, and the room which Neil designated a hole, and which Jack Trevellian might wonder at and despise. Such men as he had nothing in common with Mrs. Buncher's lodgings, and she said to him, as she withdrew her hand and put on her mended gloves: "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."