the person of Lord Hardy. At him the
people stared curiously, deciding that he was not much to look at if he
was a lord, and wondering if he was after Augusta.

"Her mother will bust, if he is. She has about as much as she can do to
keep herself together now. I wonder if she has forgot that she was once
a hired girl, and worked like the rest of us?" was whispered by some of
the envious ones.

But this was before they had received Mrs. Browne's greeting, which was
just as cordial as of old, and her voice was just as loud and hearty.
She didn't mean to be stuck up because she'd been abroad; she was a
democrat to her back-bone, she had frequently asserted, and she carried
out her principles, and shook hands with everybody, and kissed a great
many, and thanked them for coming to meet her; and then, with her
husband, Augusta, and Lord Hardy, entered her handsome carriage and was
driven toward home.

The French maid went in the omnibus, while Allen drove Daisy himself in
the pony phaeton, not a little proud of the honor, and the attention he
was attracting as he took his seat beside the beautiful woman, whose
face had never looked fairer or sweeter than it did under the widow's
bonnet.

"What a lovely pony! Is he gentle? and do you think I might venture to
drive him?" Daisy asked, with a pretty affectation of girlishness, as
they left the station; and Allen instantly put the reins in her hands,
and leaning languidly back, watched her admiringly, with a strange
thrill of something undefinable in his heart.

"Do we pass Miss McPherson's house?" Daisy asked and he replied:

"Yes, at a little distance; and we can go very near to it by taking the
road across the common," and he indicated the direction. "That is the
place, with all those cherry trees," he continued, pointing toward the
unpretentious house where Miss Betsey McPherson had lived for so many
years, and where she now sat upon the piazza, with Hannah Jerrold at her
side.

Miss Betsey had been in Boston for two weeks, and had only returned home
that morning, finding Bessie's letter of thanks, written so long ago and
not forwarded to her until one of the firm in London heard of Archie's
death. This letter she had read with a great feeling of pity for and
yearning toward the young girl who had written it.

"I wish I had sent her more, and I will by and by," she thought, never
dreaming that Archie was dead, or that his wife was so near.

She had not even heard of