After the morning when Daisy kept the sun from him in the old yew-shaded garden, and he jestingly proposed to marry her, that she might take care of him, a change came over the girl, who began to develope the talent for intrigue in which she afterward became so successful. And as a preliminary step she made herself so necessary to Archie that his life without her would hardly have been endurable, and of his own accord he always shortened as much as possible, his visits to London, for he knew how bright was the face and how warm the welcome awaiting him at Stoneleigh.
And so it came about that when Daisy was sixteen and he was twenty, he offered himself to the girl, who pretended no surprise or reserve, but promptly answered yes, and then suggested that their engagement be kept a secret from every one until he came of age and could do as he pleased, for Daisy well knew the fierce opposition he would meet from his proud relatives, if once they knew that he had stooped to the daughter of a dressmaker. And so well did she manage the affair that not even Dorothy suspected the real state of affairs, until one morning, when Archie, who had been absent for two weeks on a tour through Scotland, astonished her by walking into the house with Daisy, whom he introduced as his wife and the mistress of Stoneleigh. She, too, had been to Scotland to visit some friends, and there the marriage was consummated, and Archie had some one to take care of him at last.
And when his uncle John wrote him a most angry letter denouncing him as his nephew, and cutting off his yearly allowance, which, though small, was still something to depend upon, Daisy rose to the situation and managed his annuity, and managed the household, and managed him, until enough was saved from their slender means to start on the campaign which she had planned for herself, and which she carried out so successfully.
The Continent was her chosen field of action, and Monte Carlo the point toward which she steadily set her face; until, at last, one Lovely October day, five months after her marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Archibald McPherson, of Stoneleigh, Wales, were registered at the Hotel d'Angleterre, and look possession of one of the cheapest rooms, until they could afford a better.
"It does not matter where we sleep, or where we eat, so long as we make a good appearance outside," she said to Archie, who shrank a little at first from the close, dreary room on the fifth floor, so different from his large, airy apartment at home, which though very plainly furnished, had about it an air of refinement and respectability in striking contrast to this ten by twelve hole, where Daisy made the most ravishing toilets of the simplest materials, with which to attract and ensnare any silly moth ready to singe its wings at her flame. She had settled the point that if Archie could not earn his living because he was a McPherson, she must do it for him. Five months had sufficed to show her that there was in him no capability or disposition for work, or business, or exertion of any kind. He was a great, good-natured, easy-going, indolent fellow, popular with everybody, and very fond, and very proud of, and very dependent upon her, with no grain of jealousy in his nature. So, when the English swells, of which there were many at Monte Carlo, flocked around her, attracted by her fresh young beauty and the girlish simplicity of her manners, she readily encouraged them; not because she cared particularly for their admiration, but because she meant to use them for her own purpose, and make them subservient to her interests.
CHAPTER III.
AT MONTE CARLO.
Reader, have you ever been to Monte Carlo, that loveliest spot in all the world, where nature and art have done so much; where the summer rains fall so softly, and the winter sun shines so brightly, and where the blue of the autumnal sky is only equaled by the blue of the Mediterranean sea, whose waves kiss the beautiful shore and cool the perfumed air? If you have been there you do not need a description of the place, or of the mass of human beings, who daily press up the hill from the station, or, swarming from those grand hotels, hurry toward one common center, the tall Casino, whose gilded domes can he seen from afar, and whose interior, though, so beautiful to look upon, is, as Miss Betsey McPherson would express it, the very gate of hell. Perhaps, like the writer of this story, you have stood by the long tables, and watched the people seated there; the white-haired, watery-eyed old men, whose trembling hands can scarcely hold the gold they put down with such feverish eagerness; the men of middle age, whom experience has taught to play cautiously, and stop just before the tide of success turns against them; the young men, who, with the perspiration standing thickly about their pale lips, and a strange glitter in their feverish eyes as they see hundreds swept away, still play recklessly, desperately, until all is lost, and they leave the accursed spot, hopelessly ruined, sometimes seeking forgetfulness in death, with only the silent stars looking down upon them and the restless sea moaning in their ears, lost, lost! There are women too, at Monte Carlo, more, I verily believe than men; old women, who sit from the hour of noon to the hour of midnight; women, with their life's history written on their wrinkled, wicked faces; women, who laugh hysterically when all they have is lost, and then borrow of their friends to try their luck again; women, who go from table to table with their long bags upon their arms, and who only risk five or ten francs at a time, and stop when their unlucky star is in the ascendant, or they feel that curious eyes are watching them. For these habitual players at Monte Carlo are very superstitious, and it takes but little to unnerve them. There are young women there too, who play first, to see if they can win, and when by the fall of the little ball their gold piece is doubled, they try again and again, until the habit is fixed, and their faces are as well known in the saloons as those of the old men with the blear eyes, which find time between the plays to scan these young girls curiously, and calculate their price.
And among these young women, Daisy McPherson sat the morning after her arrival at Monte Carlo, with a look of sweet innocence on her face, and apparent unconsciousness of the attention she was attracting. She had been among the first who entered the salon at the hour of its opening, for she was eager for the contest. She did not expect Archie to play, for she knew he would not break the promise made to his dying father. But she was bound by no such vow, and she meant to make her fortune on the spot where gold was won so easily, and alas, so easily lost.