Thus reassured, Daisy played high, and her luck returned, and when she left the hall that night she was richer by a thousand pounds than when she entered it.
The next day the McPhersons left Monte Carlo, accompanied by Lord Hardy, who went with them to Genoa, and Turin, and Milan, and the Italian lakes, and Venice, where he said good-by, for he was going to Rome, while they were to turn their faces homeward, stopping for a few weeks at Paris, which Daisy said she must see before shutting herself up at stupid old Stoneleigh, which looked very uninviting to her since she had seen the world and found how much there was to enjoy and how much influence she could exert in it. Others than Ted Hardy had been attracted by the airy little beauty, who always managed to make them serviceable in some way, notwithstanding Archie's oft-repeated protest that she made too free with strangers, and accepted civilities where she ought to have given rebukes. Archie had not been altogether pleased with the campaign, and was glad when at last he drove into the old park at Stoneleigh and was warmly welcomed by Dorothy and Anthony, who had made the place as comfortable as possible with the small means at their command.
CHAPTER IV.
LITTLE BESSIE.
"Oh, Archie, isn't it a poky old place, and doesn't it smell of rats and must?" Daisy said, as with her husband she went through the great rooms, whose only ornament consisted in the warm fires on the hearth and the pots of chrysanthemums and late roses which Dorothy had put here and there by way of brightening the house up a bit and making the home-coming more cheerful for the young people.
But it needed more than roses, and chrysanthemums, and fires to satisfy Daisy, who, forgetting the little back room in the dressmaker's shop whence she came, and remembering only the delights of the Continent and the excitement of Monte Carlo, and the honor, as she thought it, of having a real live earl in her party, tossed her head a little and said she wished she was back in Paris.
But Archie did not share her feelings. It had not been pleasant for him to see Daisy ogled and admired by men he wanted to knock down, nor had he quite liked the escapade at Monte Carlo, for, aside from the fear lest the fraud should be discovered, there was always before him a dread of what his Uncle John and the Lady Jane would say, should the affair ever reach their ears, as it might, for Lord Hardy was not very discreet, and was sure to tell of it sometime.
As to the playing, could he have had his choice he would far rather have played himself than to stand by and see Daisy do it. But his vow to his father could not be broken, and so he was tolerably content, especially as the result was so far beyond his expectations. Fifteen hundred pounds was the sum total of the gains, and Daisy, who held the purse and managed everything, played the lady of Stoneleigh to perfection, and made enemies of all her former friends, her mother included, and was only stopped in her career of folly by the birth of her baby, who was not at all welcome to the childish mother.
It was the latter part of March, and the crocuses and hyacinths were just beginning to blossom in the garden at Stoneleigh, when the baby Bessie first lay in the cradle which had rocked Archie in his infancy. They did not call her Bessie at first; for there were many discussions with regard to the name, Archie wishing her called Dora for his mother, and Daisy inclining to Blanche, or Beatrice.