Never dreaming that it was a farce to gain time, Mrs. Smithers made the best of it, and saw guest after guest depart, until only the Welsh McPhersons remained, and she was longing to get away herself to the north of Scotland, where she was due the middle of September.  Fortunately Lord Hardy went home sooner than he had intended, and wrote to Daisy and her husband that his house was ready for them, and then the invalid recovered her strength rapidly, and was able in three days to leave Penrhyn Park, and travel to Ireland with Archie, who had fought hard to return to Stoneleigh and begin the new life he had resolved upon.  But Daisy knew better than to go to Hardy Manor without him, and she persuaded him to go with her and then to Paris, from which place she made a flying visit to Monte Carlo, where she met with such success that she did not greatly object to spending the holidays at Stoneleigh, whither they went just before Christmas.

It was at this time that Archie received his aunt’s letter offering to take little Bessie and bring her up as a sensible, useful woman.  For a moment Archie’s heart leaped into his throat as he thought of emancipating his child from the baneful influence around her, but when he remembered how desolate he should be without her, he said: 

“I cannot let her go.”

Upon one point, however, he was still resolved; he would remain at Stoneleigh 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