d cat," she said, "why didn't she send some money instead of
this bauble, which is a deal too large for the child? She can't wear it
in years. I must say, though, that it is very beautiful, and the old
thing did herself justice when she bought it. Look, Archie, it fits me
perfectly!" and she slipped it onto her finger, where it remained; for,
as she said, Bessie could not wear it then, and it might as well do
somebody some good.

Archie wrote at once to his aunt, inclosing a card on which Bessie had
printed with infinite pains, "I got the ring; thank you ever so much."

By some fatality this letter, which was directed to Allington, Mass.,
U.S.A., went astray, and was never received by Miss McPherson, who half
expected it, and who, with the memory of the blue-eyed child upon the
sands fresh in her mind, was prepared to answer it. But no letter came
to her, or went to Archie either, and so two people were disappointed,
and the chasm widened between them, Archie imputing it to his aunt's
peculiar nature, and she charging it all to that Jezebel, as she
stigmatized Daisy, of whom she had heard most exaggerated accounts from
her brother's wife, the Lady Jane.

CHAPTER V.

AT PENRHYN PARK.

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 house, and meet the Hon. John McPherson
and his wife, the lady Jane, she did it in perfect faith and with entire
confidence in Daisy as a matron of immaculate principles and spotless
reputation. She had met her the previous winter at a pension in
Florence, where Daisy, who was suffering from a severe cold on her
lungs, played the role of the interesting invalid, and seldom went out
except for a short walk in the warmest part of the day, and only
appeared in the parlor in the evening, where she made a lovely picture,
seated in a large easy-chair, with her pretty blue wrapper and her shawl
of soft white wool wrapped around her.

The guests of the house were mostly Americans, who had never heard of
Daisy, and knew nothing of Monte Carlo, or Lord Hardy, and only saw her
a devoted wife and mother, and wondered vaguely how she could ever have
married that long, lank, lazy Englishman, who had neither life nor
spirit in him, and whom they thought a monster, because he never seemed
the least concerned when his lovely little wife coughed the hardest, and
could scar