Part Two Chapter 9 Christmas at Stoneleigh

Two years and a half after that visit to London, Bessie McPherson, now a young lady of nearly eighteen, stood by the western window of the old house at Stoneleigh reading a letter from Neil. He had been at Stoneleigh several times since that summer in London, and these visits, with his letters always so affectionate and bright, were the only breaks in Bessie's monotonous life. Once Jack had been there for a few days, or rather to the "George," where he slept and took his meals, spending the rest of the time with Bessie, who interested him more and more, and from whom he at last fled as from a positive danger. With his limited income and his habits, he could not hope to marry, even if Bessie would have joined her young life with his matured one, which he doubted, and, with a great pang of regret he left her in the old Stoneleigh garden and did not dare look back at her, sitting there with the troubled look on her face, because he was leaving, lest he should turn back and, taking her in his arms, say the words he must not say.

And so he went his way to busy London, and heard from Blanche that the white-haired old earl in the north of England was dead, and the puny Dick master in his place.

"Only two between you and a fortune," seemed whispered in his ear, and with it came a thought of Bessie sitting under the old yew tree in the summer sunshine and looking after him.