“Bessie is wailing for me to go for a walk, and so I must bring this letter to a close.  Archie sends his love, and will, with me, be very glad to welcome you to your old home, should you care to visit it.  When I was a child I thought it the grandest place in the world, but it is very much run down, for we have no money with which to keep it up, and have only the two servants, Anthony and Dorothy, both of whom are getting old.  And yet I do not complain of Archie for not trying to do something.  Once, however, before we were married I tried to rouse him to something like energy, and caring for himself, but since seeing the world, his world I mean, for you know of course I am not what would be considered his equal socially, I have changed my mind, and do not blame him at all.  Brought up as he was with an idea that he must not work, it is very hard for him to overcome early prejudices of training and education, and I think his uncle, the Hon. John, would be intensely mortified to have his nephew in trade, though he is very careful not to give him any thing toward his support, and we are so poor that even a hundred pounds would be a fortune to us.  Maybe some good angel will send it to us by and by.

    “Hoping it most devoutly, I have the honor to be,

    “Very sincerely, your niece,

    “DAISY ALLEN McPHERSON.

    “P.S.—­Bessie thanks you again for the turquois ring you sent her.”

“A hundred pounds!  Five hundred dollars! and maybe she devoutly hopes I shall be the good angel who will send it to her, but she is mistaken.  Do I look like an angel?” Miss Betsey said, fiercely, addressing herself again to the cat.  “No, they may go to destruction their own way.  I wash my hands of them.  I should have been glad for the little girl, but I can’t have her.  She will grow up like her mother, marry some fool, have her friend and brother dangling after her, and smuggle dinners and lunches for her children up in the attic.  Well, so be it.  That ends it forever!”

The letter was an insult from beginning to end, and Miss McPherson felt it as such, and with a sigh of keen regret as for something lost, she put away the picture, and when Flora asked when little Miss Bessie was coming, she answered curtly: 

“Never!”

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

STONELEIGH.

The season is June; the time fourteen years prior to the commencement of this story, and the place an old garden in Wales, about half way between Bangor and the suspension bridge across Menai Straits.  The garden, which was very large, must have been beautiful, in the days when money was more plenty with the proprietor than at present; but now there were marks of neglect and decay everywhere, and in some parts of it the shrubs, and vines, and roses were mixed together in so hopeless a tangle that to separate them seemed