Thus appealed to, Jack looked up, with an amused smile on his face, and said: "I don't quite believe Bessie's eyes did rest on Blanche's parasol. I thought they were on you, and envied you as a lucky dog. Seriously, though," he continued, as he saw the thunderous gleam in Neil's eyes, and the look of triumph in Blanche's, "it did not occur to me that there was anything bold or unmaidenly in what the young lady did, and I never saw a more beautiful tableau than she made, standing there in the sunshine, with her bright, wavy hair, and her lovely, eager face. She is very beautiful, and I am so glad I have seen her. They are stopping at--" He hesitated, and looked at Neil, who, grateful for his defense of Bessie, unhesitatingly replied: "No. ---- Abingdon road, near High street"
"Thank you," Jack said, making a mental memorandum of the place, with a view to call, even if Bessie had said he better not.
After this little skirmish the dinner proceeded in peace, so far as Bessie was concerned, for Jack Trevellian was a kind of oracle, whose verdict could raise one to the pinnacle of public opinion, or cast him down to the depths, and if he said Bessie was not bold, nor brazen-faced, then she was not, though Lady Jane and Blanche disliked her just the same.
Neil, on the contrary, forgave her fully for the annoyance he had felt, and immediately after breakfast the next morning he started for Mrs. Buncher's. Bessie was trying on the hat when he entered. She had received the box only a few moments before, and had readily guessed that Neil was the donor, and had in part divined his motive.
"He was ashamed of my old gown and hat; and they are rather the worse for the wear, and looked very shabby among the fine dresses in the park. But they are the best I have, unless I make over those mother sent me--and that I cannot do," she thought, as she remembered, with a pang, the trunkful of half-worn garments of various kinds, which her mother had sent her from time to time, and which she could never bring herself to wear, because of the association. They had been worn in the moral mire of Monte Carlo and other places equally disreputable, and Bessie could no more have put them on than she could have adopted her mother's habits. In her linen dress, which she bought with money paid her for roses by the ladies who frequented the "George," she felt pure and respectable. But this gift from Neil, her cousin, she surely might keep, for her father said so, and, young-girl-like, she was admiring herself, or rather the hat, before the glass, when Neil himself came in.