Bessie's Fortune: A Novel

She flirted with every man on the ship who would flirt with her. Even Allen Browne was not insensible to her charms. During the last few months he had developed amazingly, and h...

When, three years after that summer, Mrs. Captain Smithers, of Penrhyn Park, Middlesex, invited Mr. and Mrs. Archibald McPherson to spend a few weeks at her handsome country hou...

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 lett...

Breakfast was waiting in the pleasant dining-room at Grey's Park, where Burton Jerrold sat before the fire, with his head bent down and his face so white and ghastly that his wi...

So noiselessly and quickly have the years come and gone since we first saw our heroine, Bessie, a little girl on the sands of Aberystwyth, and now we present her to our readers...

Bessie meant to be up with the sun, but she was so tired and the room so quiet, that she slept soundly until awakened by the long clock in the lower hall striking seven.

Seven years, and from a lovely child of eight years old Bessie McPherson had grown to a wonderfully beautiful girl of fifteen, whose face once seen could never be forgotten, it...

Mrs. Buncher had made an effort to brighten up her dingy parlor since her new lodgers took possession of it. She had washed the windows and put up clean muslin curtains, and a w...

She was five years older than her sister Geraldine, and between the two there had been a brother--Robert, or Robin, as he was familiarly called--a little blue-eyed, golden-haire...

At last there came a day when Hannah Jerrold sat in the yew-shaded garden at Stoneleigh, on the same bench where Archie once lay sleeping, with Daisy at his side keeping the fli...

"He is not at all the _Ted_ he used to be," Daisy wrote, "and it really seems as if he blames _me_ because he has lost so much at Monte Carlo. In fact, he says if I had not smug...

Between the man of twenty-three and the boy of fourteen, who had knelt upon the snow in the leafless woods and asked God to forgive him for his grandfather's sin, and had pledge...

The soup and fish had been served, and during the interval while Mr. Jerrold carved the big turkey which Hannah had contributed, and which she had fattened all the summer in ant...

After the first great shock of surprise, when the word murderer dropped from his lips, and he reproached his sister so harshly and unreasonably, Burton Jerrold stood with folded...

Four weeks passed away, and Grey, with his Aunt Lucy, was journeying through Russia, bearing with him a sense of loss and pain. The mails were very irregular, and he had never h...

Forty years or more before the night of which we write, there had come to Allington a peddler, whose home was across the sea, in Carnarvon, Wales. He was a little, cross eyed, r...

Mrs. Geraldine Jerrold, of Boston, had in her girlhood been Miss Geraldine Grey, of Allington, one of those quiet, pretty little towns which so thickly dot the hills and valleys...

When Grey awoke the next morning there was a little pile of snow on the foot of his bed, which stood near a window, and more on the hearth, which had sifted down the chimney, wh...

They did everything that it was possible for two men to do under the circumstances. They filled the old house with flowers, until it seemed like one great garden of bloom, and t...

Over this letter Bessie had a good cry, with her face on Grey's shoulder and Grey's arms around her, and when he asked why she cried she said she did not know, only the world se...

It was a steady down-pour, and the streets of Liverpool, always black and dirty, looked dirtier and blacker than ever on the day when Neil McPherson walked restlessly up and dow...

At last Mrs. Geraldine was better, and signified her willingness to let her sister-in-law return to her own home, from which she had been absent so long. She had received, with...

Old Mr. Jerrold had failed rapidly within a few weeks, but as long as possible he dressed himself every day and sat in his arm-chair in the kitchen, for the front room was rarel...

The carnival was raging through the streets of Rome, and the Corso was thronged with masqueraders and lined with spectators--Italians, English, and Americans--all eager for the...

On the table beside them lay the watch, the leathern bag, and the box which had belonged to the deceased. In the bag there were several hundred dollars in twenty, ten, and five...

Just a year after the grand wedding at Grey's Park, there was born to Burton and Geraldine a little boy, so small and frail and puny, that much solicitude would have been felt f...

When Bessie knew that the money was really theirs, when she had it in her hand and counted the bank-notes, her happiness knew no bounds, and she felt richer than Blanche Trevell...

"She is took very bad, mum," one of the women said to Lucy, as she stood aside to let her pass into the close, hot cabin, where Bessie was talking wildly and incessantly of her...

In due time Mrs. Rossiter-Browne and her daughter, Augusta, came to the "George," with their maid, and took possession of the best rooms, and scattered shillings and half-crowns...

Reader, have you ever been to Monte Carlo, that loveliest spot in all the world, where nature and art have done so much; where the summer rains fall so softly, and the winter su...

With the morrow the new housemaid came, but Miss McPherson was too anxious about her niece to observe more than that the girl was fresh, and bright, and clean, with a wonderful...

Never in her life had Bessie felt so utterly desolate and friendless as when she said good-by to Neil and threaded her way through the crowd of drays, and cabs, and express-wago...

The accommodation train from New York to Boston was late that day. There was a detention at Hartford and another at Springfield, so that the clock on Miss Betsey McPherson's man...

That was what Adolph, a messenger boy from the Quirinal, said to Grey three days later, when the latter accidentally met him in Florence and inquired for the young English girl...

Meanwhile Neil was driving on in no very enviable frame of mind. Bessie's startling demonstration had annoyed him more than he liked to confess. Why had she made such a spectacl...

Never had Neil been more gracious or agreeable than during the interval when he was waiting for the answer to his letter. He felt sure of a favorable reply and that Bessie would...

Hannah did not answer him, so intent was she upon studying her brother's face, which was anything but sympathetic, as he shook the snow from his overcoat and warmed his hands by...

It was a very merry party which met next day at the farm-house, and Mr. Jerrold was the merriest of them all, though he could not understand exactly why he was so light-hearted...

The season had been unusually warm and pleasant for New England, and until the morning of Thanksgiving Day the grass upon the lawn at Grey's Park had been almost as fresh and gr...

When Hannah reached home the gray November afternoon was already merging into the dark night, which was made still darker by the violence of the increasing storm, and never had...

"Oh, Archie, isn't it a poky old place, and doesn't it smell of rats and must?" Daisy said, as with her husband she went through the great rooms, whose only ornament consisted i...

The room in which Hugh McPherson was lying was the largest, and coolest, and best furnished in the house, for since he had been confined to his bed Dorothy had brought into it e...

The carriage which took Hannah home also took Miss McPherson to the door of her dwelling, a large, old-fashioned New England house, with a wide hall through the center, and a sq...

For nearly a week longer, Neil remained at Stoneleigh, growing more and more undecided as to his future course, and more and more in love with Bessie, whose evident depression o...

They rang first for Lord Hardy and Augusta Browne, who had intended to be married in October, but whose wedding was deferred until the second week in November, because, as Mrs....

Nine years had made but little change in Miss Betsey McPherson, either mentally or physically. As she had been at the Thanksgiving dinner where we first met her, so she was now,...

The season is June; the time fourteen years prior to the commencement of this story, and the place an old garden in Wales, about half way between Bangor and the suspension bridg...

It was Sunday, and the gay pageant of the carnival was moving through the Via Nazzionale, on which the Hotel du Quirinal stands. This was the grandest, gayest day of all, and th...

After Miss McPherson had sent her letter to her nephew, Archie, asking him to give his little daughter to her keeping, her whole nature seemed to change, and there was on her fa...

Great were the rejoicings both in Boston and Allington over the return of the travelers, and great the surprise of all, when it was known that Bessie had come back an heiress to...

The table was laid in the large dining-room, which faced the south, and whose long French windows looked into the terraced flower-garden and upon the evergreens fashioned after...

love he did not speak. Why had he changed so soon? Was it some love of his boyhood before he saw her, and had it again sprung into being, now that he had returned to its object?...

Grey had been very sick the entire voyage. Since the day when he heard that Bessie was dead he had lost all interest in everything, and though he went wherever his aunt wished t...

That was what Neil signed himself in the first letter he sent to Bessie after his return to London, and in which he assured her that he was instant in season and out of season i...

"And so you have determined to go to America?" Neil said to Bessie about four weeks later, when he came to Stoneleigh in obedience to a letter from Bessie telling him she wished...

When the word "murderer!" dropped from Burton Jerrold's lips, his father started as if a bullet had pierced his heart, and the hot blood surged up into his face, as he said:

They did just as little as they could, at least that portion of the family which was at Vichy when the news of Archie's death was received there. This portion comprised the Hon....

It was a lovely day in early October when Bessie made her first visit to Grey's Park, of which she had heard such glowing descriptions from Jennie, who took her there in an inva...

"Oh, Bessie, how could you have been so indiscreet. Now the news must reach mother, and my life will be a burden to me," Neil exclaimed, with so much severity in his tone that B...

I. Stoneleigh II. The McPhersons III. At Monte Carlo IV. Little Bessie V. At Penrhyn Park VI. Seven Years Later VII. Neil's Discomforture VIII. Jack and Bessie IX. Christmas at...

I. The Jerrolds of Boston II. Grey Jerrold III. Lucy IV. Thanksgiving Day at Grey's Park V. The Old Man and the Boy VI. Miss Betsey McPherson VII. The Dinner at Which Bessie is...

I. In Rome II. Farewell III. Dead IV. Poor Daisy V. Bessie's Decision VI. In Liverpool VII. On the Ship VIII. Grey and his Aunt IX. Bessie is Promoted X. Bessie meets her Aunt X...