Bessie's Fortune

"Yes," Daisy murmured, moving a little uneasily, "Forgive me all the past--and there is so much to forgive. I am sorry, and most of all for Archie and Bessie, whom I neglected so long. Oh, how pleasant the old home at Stoneleigh looks to me now. Bury me by Archie in the grass, it is so quiet there; and now it is getting late. I think I will retire. Good-night!"

And then, folding her hands together, she said the "Now I lay me," and Flossie, who was bending over her, knew that she was dead, and motioning to Neil, bade him take Bessie away.

Neil was very tender and very kind and loving to the poor little girl quivering with pain, but uttering no sound and shedding no tear as she lay passive in his arms, but he felt that he was badly abused, and that the burden laid upon him was heavier than he could bear. Could he have had his way, Daisy would have been buried in the Protestant cemetery, in Rome. This would have been far less expensive and have saved him no end of trouble. But when he suggested it to Bessie, she said "No" so decidedly that he gave it up and nerved himself to meet what he never could have met but for Flossie, who, as far as she could, managed everything, even to battling fiercely with the proprietor, whose bill she compelled him to lessen by several hundred francs, and when he demanded payment for four dozen towels which he said had been ruined, she insisted upon taking the towels, which she said were hers, if she paid for them. Never had portier or clerk encountered such a tempest as she proved to be, and they finally surrendered the field and let her have her own way, shrugging their shoulders significantly, as they called her "la petite diable Irelandaise."

It was old Mrs. Meredith who furnished the necessary funds, for there was no time to send to England. Neil telegraphed to his father, asking him to go down to Stoneleigh and meet them on their arrival with the body. But the Hon. John was suffering with the gout, and only Anthony and Dorothy were there, when Neil and Flossie and Bessie came, the latter utterly exhausted and unable to sit up a moment after entering the house. So they took her to her old room, which Dorothy had made as comfortable and pleasant as she could; and there Bessie lay, weak as a little child, while the kind neighbors came again and stood in the yew-shaded cemetery where Daisy was buried and where there was room for no more of the McPhersons.