Bessie's Fortune

"But you and I might live there. You would be my little housekeeper and I could teach you your lessons," Archie said, conjuring up in his mind a vision of a quiet home with Bessie as his companion.

If Daisy did not choose to stay with him she could go and come as she liked, he thought, and then and there he decided that his wandering life was at an end.

The next day the party at Penrhyn Park was increased by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Jerrold from Boston: "very nice Americans, especially the lady, who might pass for an Englishwoman," Mrs. Smithers informed her guests.

"Yes, I know them, or rather I know their son Grey, the young cub who thrashed me so last Fourth of July when we were at Melrose," Neil exclaimed; "but he's not a bad fellow after all, and we grew to be good friends, I hope he is coming, too."

But Grey did not come, as the reader will remember, for his mother made it a kind of punishment for his quarrel with Neil, that he should remain in London while she visited at Penrhyn Park, where she met with Lady Jane McPherson, whom she admired greatly, and with Daisy, whom she detested for the bold coquetry, which manifested itself so plainly after the arrival of Lord Hardy, that even Mrs. Smithers' sense of propriety was shocked, and she began to look forward with pleasure to the day when her house would be freed from the presence of this lady.

The month of August was the limit of the visit, and Daisy would have gone then had there been any place to go to except Stoneleigh. But there was not; no friendly door was open to her. She could not return to London, and she would not go to Stoneleigh: so, she resolved to remain where she was until Lord Hardy returned to his country seat in Ireland, and then she would go there and take Archie and Bessie with her.

To carry out this purpose she began suddenly to droop and affect a languor and weakness she was far from feeling, for she had really never been better in her life, and Archie knew it, and watched her with dismay as she enacted the role of the interesting invalid to perfection. A little hacking cough came on, with a pain in her side, and finally, to Mrs. Smithers' horror, she took to her bed the last week in August, unable to sit up, but overwhelmed with grief at her inability to travel, and fear lest she should be a burden upon her hostess, and outstay her welcome.