"Reely!" Blanche replied, with an upward turn of her nose. "Suppose you get out and join them; there is room for you by Jack."
"I wish I could," Neil growled, and then he relapsed into silence and scarcely spoke again until they returned to Grosvenor Square.
As soon as dinner was over he started for Abingdon road, and was told by Mrs. Buncher, who received him with a slight increase of dignity in her manner, as became one before whose door carriages and servants in livery had stood twice in one day, that Mr. McPherson and the young lady had gone to see "Pinafore" with the gentleman who took them to drive.
"The deuce they have!" Neil muttered and hailing a cab he too drove to the theater, and securing the best seat he could at that late hour, looked over the house till he found the party he was searching for, Archie, in his threadbare coat, and high, standing collar, looking a little bored for himself, but pleased for Bessie, whose face was radiant as she watched the progress of the play.
For once Neil forgot the puffs and the linen gown, and thought only of the exquisitely beautiful face and rippling golden hair, for Bessie's head was uncovered, and Neil saw that she received quite as much admiration from the fashionable crowd as did Little Buttercup or the Captain's daughter, and that Jack looked supremely happy and nodded to his friends here and there as if to call their attention to the girl beside him.
"Confound him!" Neil thought. "What business has he to take charge of Bessie in this way? I'll not allow it!"
But Jack had the inside track and kept it, in spite of Neil; and during the ten days Bessie remained in London he took her everywhere, and when she left he knew much more of some parts of the city than he did before. Never in his life had he visited the Tower, which he looked upon as a place frequented only by Americans or country people; but as, after the park, this was the spot of all others which Bessie wished to see, he went there with her, and joining the party waiting for their ranks to be full, followed the pompous beefeater up stairs and down stairs, and into the lady's chamber, and saw the steps by the water-gate where Elizabeth sat down when she landed there a prisoner to her sister, and saw the thumb-screws and other instruments of torture, and more fire-arms and bayonets grouped in the shape of sunflowers and roses than he had supposed were in the world, and climbed to the little room where Guilford Dudley was imprisoned, and stared stupidly at the name of Jane cut upon the wall, and looked down the staircase under which it was said the murdered princes were thrown, and horrified Bessie by asking who all these people were he had been hearing about.