Bessie's Fortune

"I don't know what we are going to do," Archie said, when alone with his wife in the beautiful room over which Daisy had gone into ecstasies, exclaiming, as she seated herself in a luxurious easy-chair: "Why, Archie, we are housed like princes! We have never been in a place like this. I wish we were to stay longer than a month. I mean to manage somehow for an extension."

A low growl was the only sound from Archie, who was busy brushing off the dust gathered on the journey.

"Say, isn't it nice?" she continued, and then coming into the room and wiping his face with the towel as he came, Archie replied: "Nice enough, yes; but I don't know what we are going to do when we have to leave here, I tell you, it makes a chap feel mighty mean not to have a shilling in his pocket, and that's just my case. How much have you?"

"Twenty shillings," was Daisy's reply. "But never mind; trust me to fill the purse somehow. I have an idea; so, don't look so glum, and let us enjoy the present."

"But I can't," Archie replied; "I cannot enjoy myself, feeling all the time that we are living upon other people, and accepting invitations we never can return. In short, we are nothing but impostors, both of us."

He spoke savagely, and turned to re-enter his dressing-room, in the door of which Bessie stood, with her great blue eyes fixed wonderingly and sadly upon him. She had heard all the conversation, and there was a troubled look on her face, as she said: "What is an impostor, papa? What does it mean?"

"It means," he answered, "that we impose upon people every hour of our lives, passing ourselves off for what we are not. People suppose we have money, when we haven't a shilling to spare, and owe everybody besides."

"I see; it means we are shams, and not real," Bessie said, and her bright face was overclouded with an expression pitiful to see in one so young.

This was the McPhersons' first day at Penrhyn Park, but the little passage at arms did not at all dim Daisy's sky. Something would turn up, she knew; and at dinner something did turn up, for Mrs. Smithers mentioned to Archie that her husband had fallen in with the young Irish lord who had been for a day or two at the pension in Florence, and, remembering how intimate he was with Mr. McPherson he had invited him to spend a week at Penrhyn Park, and the young man had accepted, and would arrive the 10th. There was a gleam of triumph in Daisy's eyes as they met her husband's. The presence of Lord Hardy meant money, for she had only to lament her poverty and talk of burying herself at Stoneleigh, and instantly the generous Irishman would insist upon relieving her present needs.