Rex had asked her to be his wife, but she stood face to face with the truth at last--he did not love her. It was not only a blow of the keenest and cruelest kind to her affection, but it was the cruelest blow her vanity could possibly have received.
To think that she, the wealthy, petted heiress, who counted her admirers by the score, should have tried so hard to win the love of this one man and have failed; that her beauty, her grace, her wit, and her talent had been lavished upon him, and lavished in vain. "Was that simple girl, with her shy, timid, shrinking manner, more lovable than I?" she asked herself, incredulously.
She could not realize it--she, whose name was on the lips of men, who praised her as the queen of beauty, and whom fair women envied as one who had but to will to win.
It seemed to her a cruel mockery of fate that she, who had everything the world could give--beauty and fortune--should ask but this one gift, and that it should be refused her--the love of the man who had asked her to be his wife.
Was it impossible that he should learn to love her?
She told herself that she should take courage, that she would persevere, that her great love must in time prevail.
"I must never let him find me dull or unhappy," she thought. "I must carefully hide all traces of pique or annoyance."
She would do her best to entertain him, and make it the study of her life to win his love.
She watched the stars until they faded from the skies, then buried her face in her pillow, falling into an uneasy slumber, through which a beautiful, flower-like, girlish face floated, and a slight, delicate form knelt at her feet holding her arms out imploringly, sobbing out:
"Do not take him from me--he is my world--I love him!"
And with a heart racked by terrible jealousy, Pluma turned uneasily on her pillow and opened her eyes. The stars were still glimmering in the moonlighted sky.
"Is the face of Daisy Brooks ever to haunt me thus?" she cried out, impatiently. "How was I to know she was to die?" she muttered, excitedly. "I simply meant to have Stanwick abduct her from the seminary that Rex might believe him her lover and turn to me for sympathy. I will not think of it," she cried; "I am not one to flinch from a course of action I have marked out for myself, no matter what the consequences may be, if I only gain Rex"s love."
And Pluma, the bride soon to be, turned her flushed face again to the wall to dream again of Daisy Brooks.
She little dreamed Rex, too, was watching the stars, as wakeful as she, thinking of the past.
Then he prayed Heaven to help him, so that no unworthy thought should enter his mind. After that he slept, and one of the most painful days of his life was ended.
The days at Whitestone Hall flew by on rapid wings in a round of gayety. The Hall was crowded with young folks, who were to remain until after the marriage. Dinner parties were followed by May-pole dances out on the green lawns, and by charades and b.a.l.l.s in the evening. The old Hall had never echoed with such frolicsome mirth before. Rex plunged into the excitement with strange zest. No one guessed that beneath his winning, careless smile his heart was almost breaking.
One morning Pluma was standing alone on the vine-covered terrace, waiting for Rex, who had gone out to try a beautiful spirited horse that had just been added to the stables of Whitestone Hall. She noticed he had taken the unfrequented road the magnolia-trees shaded.
That fact bore no significance, certainly; still there was a strong feeling of jealousy in her heart as she remembered that little wooden cross he would be obliged to pa.s.s. Would he stop there? She could not tell.
"How I love him--and how foolish I am!" she laughed, nervously. "I have no rival, yet I am jealous of his very thoughts, lest they dwell on any one else but myself. I do not see how it is," she said, thoughtfully, to herself, "why people laugh at love, and think it weakness or a girl"s sentimental folly. Why, it is the strongest of human pa.s.sions!"
She heard people speak of her approaching marriage as "a grand match"--she heard him spoken of as a wealthy Southerner, and she laughed a proud, happy, rippling laugh. She was marrying Rex for love; she had given him the deepest, truest love of her heart.
Around a bend in the terrace she heard approaching footsteps and the rippling of girlish laughter.
"I can not have five minutes to myself to think," she said to herself, drawing hastily back behind the thick screen of leaves until they should pa.s.s. She did not feel in the humor just then to listen to Miss Raynor"s chatter or pretty Grace Alden"s gossip.
"Of course every one has a right to their own opinion," Grace was saying, with a toss of her pretty nut-brown curls, "and I, for one, do not believe he cares for her one whit."
"It is certainly very strange," responded Miss Raynor, thoughtfully.
"Every one can see she is certainly in love with Rex; but I am afraid it is quite a one-sided affair."
"Yes," said Grace, laughing shyly, "a _very_ one-sided affair. Why, have you ever noticed them together--how Pluma watches his face and seems to live on his smiles? And as for Rex, he always seems to be looking over her head into the distance, as though he saw something there far more interesting than the face of his bride-to-be. That doesn"t look much like love or a contented lover."
"If you had seen him this morning you might well say he did not look contented," replied Miss Raynor, mysteriously. "I was out for a morning ramble, and, feeling a little tired, I sat down on a moss-covered stone to rest. Hearing the approaching clatter of a horse"s hoofs, I looked up and saw Rex Lyon coming leisurely down the road. I could not tell you what prompted me to do it, but I drew quietly back behind the overhanging alder branches that skirted the brook, admiring him all unseen."
"Oh, dear!" cried Grace, merrily, "this is almost too good to keep.
Who would imagine dignified Miss Raynor peeping admiringly at handsome Rex, screened by the shadows of the alders!"
"Now don"t be ridiculous, Grace, or I shall be tempted not to tell you the most interesting part," returned Miss Raynor, flushing hotly.
"Oh, that would be too cruel," cried Grace, who delighted on anything bordering on mystery. "Do tell it."
"Well," continued Miss Raynor, dropping her voice to a lower key, "when he was quite opposite me, he suddenly stopped short and quickly dismounted from his horse, and picked up from the roadside a handful of wild flowers."
"What in the world could he want with them?" cried Grace, incredulously.
"Want with them!" echoed Miss Raynor. "Why, he pressed them to his lips, murmuring pa.s.sionate, loving words over them. For one brief instant his face was turned toward me, and I saw there were tears standing in his eyes, and there was a look on his face I shall never forget to my dying day. There was such hopeless woe upon it--indeed one might have almost supposed, by the expression of his face, he was waiting for his death-sentence to be p.r.o.nounced instead of a marriage ceremony, which was to give him the queenly heiress of Whitestone Hall for a bride."
"Perhaps there is some hidden romance in the life of handsome Rex the world does not know of," suggested Grace, sagely.
"I hope not," replied Miss Raynor. "I would hate to be a rival of Pluma Hurlhurst"s. I have often thought, as I watched her with Rex, it must be terrible to worship one person so madly. I have often thought Pluma"s a perilous love."
"Do not speak so," cried Grace. "You horrify me. Whenever I see her face I am afraid those words will be ringing in my ears--a perilous love."
Miss Raynor made some laughing rejoinder which Pluma, white and trembling behind the ivy vines, did not catch, and still discussing the affair, they moved on, leaving Pluma Hurlhurst standing alone, face to face with the truth, which she had hoped against hope was false. Rex, who was so soon to be her husband, was certainly not her lover.
Her keen judgment had told her long ago all this had come about through his mother"s influence.
Every word those careless lips had uttered came back to her heart with a cruel stab.
"Even my guests are noticing his coldness," she cried, with a hysterical little sob. "They are saying to each other, "He does not love me"--I, who have counted my triumphs by the scores. I have revealed my love in every word, tone and glance, but I can not awaken one sentiment in his proud, cold heart."
When she remembered the words, "He pressed them to his lips, murmuring pa.s.sionate, loving words over them," she almost cried aloud in her fierce, angry pa.s.sion. She knew, just as well as though she had witnessed him herself, that those wild flowers were daisies, and she knew, too, why he had kissed them so pa.s.sionately. She saw the sun shining on the trees, the flower-beds were great squares and circles of color, the fountains sparkled in the sunlight, and restless b.u.t.terflies flitted hither and thither.
For Pluma Hurlhurst, after that hour, the sunshine never had the same light, the flowers the same color, her face the same smile, or her heart the same joyousness.
Never did "good and evil" fight for a human heart as they struggled in that hour in the heart of the beautiful, willful heiress. All the fire, the pa.s.sion, and recklessness of her nature were aroused.
"I will make him love me or I will die!" she cried, vehemently. "The love I long for shall be mine. I swear it, cost what it may!"
She was almost terribly beautiful to behold, as that war of pa.s.sion raged within her.
She saw a cloud of dust arising in the distance. She knew it was Rex returning, but no bright flush rose to her cheek as she remembered what Miss Raynor had said of the wild flowers he had so rapturously caressed--he had given a few rank wild flowers the depths of a pa.s.sionate love which he had never shown to her, whom he had asked to be his wife.
She watched him as he approached nearer and nearer, so handsome, so graceful, so winning, one of his white hands carelessly resting on the spirited animal"s proudly arched, glossy neck, and with the other raising his hat from his brown curls in true courtly cavalier fashion to her, as he saw her standing there, apparently awaiting him on the rose-covered terrace.
He looked so handsome and lovable Pluma might have forgotten her grievance had she not at that moment espied, fastened to the lapel of his coat, a cl.u.s.ter of golden-hearted daisies.
That sight froze the light in her dark, pa.s.sionate eyes and the welcome that trembled on her scarlet lips.
He leaped lightly from the saddle, and came quickly forward to meet her, and then drew back with a start.
"What is the matter, Pluma?" he asked, in wonder.