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 believed her grief genuine, mingled as it must be with remorse for the past, and laying his hand on her bowed head, he said to her, kindly: 

“I am very sorry for you, and if I can do anything for you, do not hesitate to command me.”

Alas for poor weak human nature when perverted from its better side!  The sound of Teddy’s voice, so different from what it had been before during the voyage, awoke a throb in Daisy’s heart, which she would not like to have confessed to those around her.  She was free now, and who knew that she might not one day be mistress of that handsome place in Ireland, Lord Hardy’s home, if she only played her cards well.  Surely that low-born Yankee girl, Augusta Browne, could never be her rival, even if she had money.  Such was the thought which flashed like lightning through Daisy’s mind as she felt the touch of Lord Hardy’s hand and heard his sympathetic voice.

Her first impulse, when she read the telegram, had been that she must go back to Bessie in the first ship which sailed, but now her decision was reversed.  Archie was dead and buried.  She could do no good to him, and she might as well stay a little while, especially as she knew Lord Hardy had accepted Mrs. Browne’s invitation to spend a few days with them at the Ridge House.  It would never do to abandon the field to Augusta, she reflected, but her tears flowed just as fast, and, to do her justice, there was a sense of bitter pain in her heart, as she sat with her head bowed down, while the Brownes and Lord Hardy stood around trying to comfort her.  Mrs. Browne offered her sal-volatile and called her “my poor dear;” Augusta put her arms around her neck; Allen fanned her gently, and Lord Hardy asked what he could do, while Mr. Browne said it was “plaguey hard on her, but somebody must go and see to them confounded custom-house chaps, or they would have every dud out of the ten trunks, and there’d be a pretty how-d’ye-do.”

Thus reminded of what had been a terror to her all the voyage, Mrs. Browne suggested that Daisy should leave the ship and sit on the wharf with “Gusty to attend to her, while she helped her husband pull through.”

It was in vain that Mr. Browne protested against any help, telling his better-half to mind her business, and saying that she’d only upset everything with her fussiness and red face.  But Mrs. Browne would not listen.  She was not going to let him lie.  She had given him numerous lectures on that point during the voyage, and had always ended them with the assertion that she wouldn’t pay duty either!  Just what she meant to do she did not know, but she went with her husband to the field of combat, and was soon hotly engaged with three officers,