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It is so dreadful, and what shall I do? Oh, oh, it isn't Neil!" and she gave a little scream of terror and surprise, as, looking up, she met Grey Jerrold's face bending over her instead of Neil's. Grey had been to Carnarvon on the old business, and, moved by a desire to see Bessie's blue eyes again, had come to the "George Hotel" to pass the night, intending to call at Stoneleigh in the morning.
Where could it have come from, I wonder," Daisy said, as, without a suspicion of the truth, she broke the seal and read: "STONELEIGH, June . "Your husband died this morning, quietly and peacefully. Bessie well, but very tired. "Oh-h! Archie, my husband!"
And he went to Stoneleigh and tried all the way there to think of Bessie as she looked in the park, in the old faded gown with the disfiguring puffs; tried to make himself believe that she had no manner, no style, and would not pass for a great lady among people city bred; that she was better suited to some quiet home such as Grey Jerrold might give her, were he happy enough to win her.
Goodnough began, "there can be no harm in telling you now, though she didn't want anybody to know; not for herself she ain't a bit ashamed, but some of her high friends is, and made her promise to keep to herself who she was; but you are bound to know, and she is Miss Bessie McPherson, of Stoneleigh, and she is not dead at all, and never has been.
Upon one point, however, he was still resolved; he would remain at Stoneleigh and keep Bessie with him. Nothing could change that decision. Daisy would of course go where she pleased. He could not restrain her, and as many Englishwomen did travel alone on the Continent, she might escape remark in that respect, and be no more talked about than if he were with her.
That potent factor in British politics, the electioneering egg, had been entirely superseded by the snowball, and the youth of Stoneleigh, massed in the public square outside the Town Hall, were engaged, with a lofty indifference to party distinctions that would have been sublime if it had not been so painful, in an untrammelled bombardment of all who crossed their path.
This he took for approval to Daisy, who said it was very well, but insisted that he should add a P.S. that if his aunt had fifty pounds or so of ready money, he would like to borrow it for a time, as his expenses were heavy, and Stoneleigh needed so much repairing.
Fortunately Lord Hardy went home sooner than he had intended, and wrote to Daisy and her husband that his house was ready for them, and then the invalid recovered her strength rapidly, and was able in three days to leave Penrhyn Park, and travel to Ireland with Archie, who had fought hard to return to Stoneleigh and begin the new life he had resolved upon.
Smithers said, because she had received the impression that the McPhersons of London slighted the McPhersons of Stoneleigh, not so much for their poverty, as for the fact that Daisy's family was not equal to their own. "And this I think very absurd," she said to Daisy.
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!"
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