The voyage had been unusually long, but this was their last day out. New York was in sight, and in her most becoming attire Daisy stood upon the deck, looking eagerly at the, to her, new world, and wholly unconscious of the shock awaiting her on the shore which they were slowly nearing. At last the ship reached the dock, the plank was thrown out, and a throng of passengers crowed the gangway.
"Is Mrs. Archibald McPherson on board?" was shouted through the ship, and in a flutter of expectation Daisy went forward, announcing herself as the lady in question. "A telegram has been waiting for you more than a week," was the response, as the officer placed in her hand the yellow missive whose purport he knew.
"A message for me! 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.
"GREY JERROLD."
"Oh-h! Archie, my husband!" Daisy cried, bitterly as she sank down into a chair and covered her face with her hands, while over her for a moment there swept a great wave of regret for the man she had loved in the days when she was innocent and young, and not the hard, selfish woman of the world that she was now. "Archie is dead, dead!" she moaned, as the Rossiter-Brownes gathered around her, together with Lord Hardy, who took the telegram from her and read it aloud, while he, too, experienced a throb of pain for the man he had known so long and esteemed so highly, even while he despised him for his weakness in suffering his wife to lead the life she had.
How vividly it all came back to him--the day when he first saw Archibald McPherson, the fair English boy, for he was scarcely more than that, with his young girl-wife, so innocent and lovely then. And she was lovely still and he pitied her, for he believed her grief genuine, mingled as it must be with remorse for the past, and laying his hand on her bowed head, he said to her, kindly: "I am very sorry for you, and if I can do anything for you, do not hesitate to command me."
Alas for poor weak human nature when perverted from its better side! The sound of Teddy's voice, so different from what it had been before during the voyage, awoke a throb in Daisy's heart, which she would not like to have confessed to those around her. She was free now, and who knew that she might not one day be mistress of that handsome place in Ireland, Lord Hardy's home, if she only played her cards well. Surely that low-born Yankee girl, Augusta Browne, could never be her rival, even if she had money. Such was the thought which flashed like lightning through Daisy's mind as she felt the touch of Lord Hardy's hand and heard his sympathetic voice.