It must be _ages_ before her league with Harry Musgrave could be
concluded, and therefore let it be still, as it had been always,
suspected, but not confessed--unless she were over-urged by Harry's
rival and her northern kinsfolk and friends. Then she would declare her
mind, but not before. Lady Latimer asked no questions. Her woman's
discernment was not at fault, but she had her own opinion of youthful
constancy and early loves and early vows, and believed that when they
were not to be approved they were to be most judiciously ignored.
The next day was so fully occupied with engagements made beforehand that
Bessie had no chance of going again to Beechhurst, but she did not make
a grief of it--she could not have made a grief of anything just then. On
the last morning, however, to her dear surprise, the doctor stopped at
the door for a parting word of her mother's love and his own, and their
hopes that she would soon be coming amongst them again; and when she
went away an hour later she went as joyous as she had come, though she
knew that a report of her untoward behavior had gone before her, and
that the probabilities were she would enter into an atmosphere of clouds
the moment she reached Abbotsmead.
But it did not prove so. Lady Latimer had written cautiously and
kindly--had not been able to give any assurance of Mr. Cecil Burleigh's
success, but had a feeling that it must come to pass.
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