The season is June; the time fourteen years prior to the commencement of this story, and the place an old garden in Wales, about half way between Bangor and the suspension bridge across Menai Straits. The garden, which was very large, must have been beautiful, in the days when money was more plenty with the proprietor than at present; but now there were marks of neglect and decay everywhere, and in some parts of it the shrubs, and vines, and roses were mixed together in so hopeless a tangle that to separate them seemed impossible, while the yew trees, of which there were several, grew dark, and thick, and untrimmed, and cast heavy shadows upon the grass plats near them. The central part of the garden, however, showed signs of care. The broad gravel walk was clean and smooth, and the straight borders beside it were full of summer flowers, among which roses were conspicuous. Indeed, there were roses everywhere, for Anthony loved them as if they were his children, and so did the white-faced invalid indoors, whose room old Dorothy, Anthony's wife, kept filled with the freshest and choicest. It did not matter to her that the sick man had wandered very far from the path of duty, and was dying from excessive dissipation; he was her pride, her boy, whom she had tended from his babyhood, and whom she would watch over and care for to the last. She had defended and stood by him, when he brought home a pretty little brown-eyed, brown haired creature, whose only fault was her poverty and the fact that she was a chorus singer in the operas in London, where Hugh McPherson had seen and fallen in love with her. Two years she lived at Stoneleigh, happy as the singing birds which flew about the place and built their nests in the yews, and then one summer morning she died, and left to Dorothy's care a little boy of three weeks, who, without much attention from any one as regarded his moral and mental culture, had scrambled along somehow, and had reached the age of sixteen without a single serious thought as to his future and without ever having made the least exertion for himself. Dorothy and Anthony, the two servants of the place, had taken care of him, and would continue to do so even after his father's death, or, if they did not, his uncle, the Hon. John McPherson, in London, would never see him want, he thought; so, with no bad habits except his extreme indolence, which amounted to absolute laziness, the boy's days passed on, until the hot summer morning in June, when he lay asleep on a broad bench under the shade of a yew tree, with his face upturned to the sunlight which penetrated through the overchanging boughs and fell in patches upon him. Occasionally a fly or honey-bee came and buzzed about him, but never alighted upon him, because of the watchful vigilance of the young girl who stood by his side, shielding him from the sun's rays with her person and her while cape bonnet, which she also used to scare away the insects, for Archie McPherson must not be troubled even in his sleep, if care of hers could prevent it.
The girl who was not more than twelve in reality, though, her training had made her much older in knowledge and experience, was singularly beautiful, with great blue eyes and wavy golden hair, which fell in long curls to her waist. Her dress, though scrupulously neat and clean, and becoming, indicated that she belonged to the middle or working class, far below the social position of the boy. But whatever inequality of rank there was between them, she had never felt it, for ever since she could remember anything, Archie McPherson had played with and petted and teased her, and she was almost as much at home at Stoneleigh as in the work-room of her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Allen, who made dresses for the ladies of Bangor and vicinity.
"How handsome he is," she said to herself, as she gazed admiringly upon the sleeping boy, "and how white and slim his hands are. A great deal whiter than mine, but that, I suppose, is because he is a gentleman's son, and I have to wash dishes, and sweep and dust the rooms;" and the girl glanced regretfully at her own hands, which, though fat and well-shaped, were brown, and showed signs of the dusting and dish-washing required of her by her mother, whose means were very limited, and whose dressmaking did not warrant luxury of any kind.
"I wish my hands were white, and that I could wear diamond rings like the ladies at the George," she continued; "and sometime I will, if they are only shams. Half the world does not know the difference."
Just then a handsome carriage containing a gentleman and lady, child and nurse, and maid, turned in at the lodge gate, which Anthony opened very respectfully, with a pull at his forelock.
"That's the McPhersons from London! What an ugly, proud-looking thing Lady Jane is!" the girl thought, and in watching the carriage as it drove toward the house she relaxed her vigilance so far that a huge blue bottle-fly which had been skirting around the spot, for some time, alighted squarely upon Archie's nose, and roused him from his slumber.
Yawning lazily, and stretching his long arms, he looked up, and seeing his companion, called out, in a tone half familiar, half patronizing, as he would address an inferior:
"Halloo, Daze, what are you doing here?"
"Keeping the sun and the flies off from you; they bite awfully this morning," she answered, quietly, and Archie continued:
"Upon my word, Daze, you are a little trump, standing bareheaded in the sun to shield me! How long have you been here?"