, softly:

"Archie, I have come to say good-by, but only a little while. I shall
soon be back to stay with you always, or until you are better."

"I shall never be any better," he replied, never suspecting how far she
was going from him, "but go, if you like," he continued, "and be happy.
I do not mind it as I used to, for I have Bessie and the birds, who sing
to me now all the time. Can't you hear them? They are saying 'Archie,
Archie, come,' as if it were my mother calling to me."

His mind was wandering now, and Daisy felt a thrill of pain as she
looked at him and felt that he was not getting better, that he was
failing fast, though just how fast she did not guess.

"Archie," she said, at last, "you love me, don't you? You told me you
did in the garden the other day, but I want to hear it again."

"Love you? You?" he said, inquiringly, as he looked at her with an
unsteady, imbecile gaze as if to ask who she was that he should love
her.

"Yes," she said. "I am Daisy. Don't you remember the little girl who
used to come to you under the yews?"

"Yes," and his lip trembled a little. "The girl who gave herself and her
bonnet to shield me from the flies and sun. You did that then; but
Bessie has given herself to me, body and soul, through cold and hunger,
sunshine and storm. God bless her, God bless my darling Bessie."

"And won't you bless me, too, Archie? I should like to remember that in
time to come," Daisy said, seized by some impulse she could not
understand.

Archie hesitated a moment as if not quite comprehending her, then
drawing her down to him he kissed her with the old, fervent kiss he used
to give her when they were boy and girl together, and, laying his hand
upon her head, said tremblingly:

"Will God bless Daisy, too, and bring her at last to where I shall be
waiting for her?"

Then Daisy withdrew herself from him, and without another word went out
from his presence and never saw him again. To Bessie, sobbing by the
door, she said very little; there was a passionate embrace and a few
farewell kisses and then she was gone, and twenty minutes later Bessie
heard the train as it passed bearing her mother away.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BIRDS WHICH SANG, AND THE SHADOW WHICH FELL.

Daisy wrote to her daughter from Liverpool where they were stopping at
the Adelphi, and where Lord Hardy had joined them _en route_ for America
and the far West.

"He is not at all the _Ted_ he used to be," Daisy