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 wrote, “and it really seems as if he blames me because he has lost so much at Monte Carlo.  In fact, he says if I had not smuggled him in, he should probably never have played there at all.  I think I shall know it when I take another young Irishman in hand.  By the way, he brought me news of the death of Sir Henry Trevellian, of Trevellian Castle, in the north of England He was thrown from his horse and killed instantly Jack Trevellian was with him, and, it is said, was nearly heart-broken, though by this accident he has become Sir Jack, and is master of a fine old place and a tolerably fair fortune.  He will be much sought after now, but if ever he comes in your way again, and you play your cards well you may be my Lady Trevellian.  How does that sound to you?”

“Sir Jack Trevellian,” Bessie repeated to herself, while there swept over her a great pity for the poor young man, smitten down so suddenly, while for Jack she was glad, knowing how well he would fill the place and how worthy he was of it.