I have been giving Harry Musgrave the benefit of my
wanderings in Italy thirty years ago, and he is so enchanted that you
will have to turn gypsy again next spring, Miss Fairfax."
"It will suit me exactly--a mule or an ox-cart instead of the train,
byways for highways, and sauntering for speed. Did I not tell you long
ago, Mr. Phipps, that the gypsy wildness was in the Fairfax blood, and
that some day it would be my fate to travel ever so far and wide, and to
come home again browner than any berry?"
"Why, you see, Miss Fairfax, the wisest seer is occasionally blind, and
you are that rare bird, a consistent woman. Knowing the great lady you
most admired, I feared for you some fatal act of imitation. But, thank
God! you have had grace given you to appreciate a simple-minded, lovable
fellow, who will take you out of conventional bonds, and help you to
bend your life round in a perfect circle. You are the happiest woman it
has been my lot to meet with."
Bessie did not speak, but she looked up gratefully in the face of her
old friend.
CHAPTER XLIX.
_BESSIE'S LAST RIDE WITH THE DOCTOR._
Mr. Carnegie complained that he had less of his dear Bessie's company
than anybody else by reason of his own busy occupation, and one clear
September morning, when the air was wonderfully fresh and sweet after a
thunderstorm during the night, he asked her to come out for a last ride
with him before Harry Musgrave carried her away.
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