h and keep Bessie with him. Nothing could change that decision.
Daisy would of course go where she pleased. He could not restrain her,
and as many Englishwomen did travel alone on the Continent, she might
escape remark in that respect, and be no more talked about than if he
were with her. At first Daisy objected to this plan. It was necessary
for her to earn their living, she said, and the least Archie could do
was to give the support of his presence. But Archie was firm, and when
in February Daisy started again on her trip, which had for its
destination Monte Carlo and Genoa, Archie was left behind with his
twenty-pound note, which he had not yet touched, and with Bessie as his
only companion.

CHAPTER VI.

SEVEN YEARS LATER.

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 was so sweet, and pure, and refined,
and yet so sad in its expression at times, as if she carried some burden
heavier than the care of her father, who was fast sinking into a state
of confirmed invalidism, and to whom she devoted all the freshness of
her young life, with no thought for herself or her own comfort. And
there was a shadow on the girl's life; a burden of shame and regret for
the silly, frivolous mother, who spent so little time at home, but who
flitted from place to place on the Continent, not always in the best of
company but managing generally to hang on to some old dowager either
English, French, or German, and so cover herself with an appearance of
respectability. Sometimes Lord Hardy was with her, and sometimes he was
not, for as he grew older and knew her better, he began to weary of her
a very little. Just now he was in Egypt, and before he started he sent
her a receipt in full for all her indebtedness to him for borrowed money
which he knew she could never pay. And Daisy had written to her husband
that the debt was paid, and had given him to understand that a stroke of
unparalleled success had enabled her to do it. When her mother died two
years before, and left a few hundreds to her daughter, Archie had urged
the necessity of sending the whole to young Hardy, but Daisy had refused
and spent it for herself. Now, however, it was paid, and he was glad,
and quite content with his uneventful life, even though, it was a life
of the closest economy and self-denial for himself and Bessie.

When Da