Archie wrote at once to his aunt, inclosing a card on which Bessie had
printed with infinite pains, "I got the ring; thank you ever so much."
By some fatality this letter, which was directed to Allington, Mass.,
U.S.A., went astray, and was never received by Miss McPherson, who half
expected it, and who, with the memory of the blue-eyed child upon the
sands fresh in her mind, was prepared to answer it. But no letter came
to her, or went to Archie either, and so two people were disappointed,
and the chasm widened between them, Archie imputing it to his aunt's
peculiar nature, and she charging it all to that Jezebel, as she
stigmatized Daisy, of whom she had heard most exaggerated accounts from
her brother's wife, the Lady Jane.
CHAPTER V.
AT PENRHYN PARK.
When, three years after that summer, Mrs. Captain Smithers, of Penrhyn
Park, Middlesex, invited Mr. and Mrs. Archibald McPherson to spend a few
weeks at her handsome country house, and meet the Hon. John McPherson
and his wife, the lady Jane, she did it in perfect faith and with entire
confidence in Daisy as a matron of immaculate principles and spotless
reputation.
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