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.
Pages:
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435