ay the time. So,
while his son flirted with the fair lady on deck, Mr. Browne bet for her
in the smoking-room with so good success, that when the losses and gains
were footed up she found herself richer by one hundred and fifty dollars
than when she left Liverpool. Mrs. Browne did not believe in betting. It
was as bad as gambling, she said. And Daisy admitted it, but said, with,
tears in her eyes, that it would do so much good to Bessie and her sick
husband, to whom she should send every farthing as soon as she reached
New York.

The voyage had been unusually long, but this was their last day out. New
York was in sight, and in her most becoming attire Daisy stood upon the
deck, looking eagerly at the, to her, new world, and wholly unconscious
of the shock awaiting her on the shore which they were slowly nearing.
At last the ship reached the dock, the plank was thrown out, and a
throng of passengers crowed the gangway.

"Is Mrs. Archibald McPherson on board?" was shouted through the ship,
and in a flutter of expectation Daisy went forward, announcing herself
as the lady in question. "A telegram has been waiting for you more than
a week," was the response, as the officer placed in her hand the yellow
missive whose purport he knew.

"A message for me! Where could it have come from, I wonder," Daisy said,
as, without a suspicion of the truth, she broke the seal and read:

"STONELEIGH, June ----.

"Your husband died this morning, quietly and peacefully. Bessie
well, but very tired.

"GREY JERROLD."

"Oh-h! Archie, my husband!" Daisy cried, bitterly as she sank down into
a chair and covered her face with her hands, while over her for a moment
there swept a great wave of regret for the man she had loved in the days
when she was innocent and young, and not the hard, selfish woman of the
world that she was now. "Archie is dead, dead!" she moaned, as the
Rossiter-Brownes gathered around her, together with Lord Hardy, who took
the telegram from her and read it aloud, while he, too, experienced a
throb of pain for the man he had known so long and esteemed so highly,
even while he despised him for his weakness in suffering his wife to
lead the life she had.

How vividly it all came back to him--the day when he first saw Archibald
McPherson, the fair English boy, for he was scarcely more than that,
with his young girl-wife, so innocent and lovely then. And she was
lovely still and he pitied her, for he belie