"Why, you don"t think it is going to rain, do you? Why, it will spoil the rose-bower she is to be married in and all the beautiful decoration. Oh, please don"t predict anything so awfully horrible; you make me feel nervous; besides, you know what everybody says about weddings on which the rain falls."
"Would you be afraid to experiment on the idea?" asked the impulsive young fellow, who always acted on the spur of the moment. "If to-morrow were a rainy day, and I should say to you, "Bess, will you marry me to-day or never?" what would your answer be?"
"I should say, just now, I do not like "ifs and ands." Supposing a case, and standing face to face with it, are two different things. I like people who say what they mean, and mean what they say."
Pluma saw the dazzling light flame into the bashful young lover"s eyes as he bent his head lower over the blushing girl who had shown him the right way to capture a hesitating heart.
"_That_ is love," sighed Pluma. "Ah, if Rex would only look at me like that I would think this earth a heaven." She looked up at the bright, dazzling clouds overhead; then she remembered the words she had heard--"It looked like rain on the morrow."
Could those white, fleecy clouds darken on the morrow that was to give her the only treasure she had ever coveted in her life?
She was not superst.i.tious. Even if it did rain, surely a few rain-drops could not make or mar the happiness of a lifetime. She would not believe it.
"Courage until to-morrow," she said, "and my triumph will be complete.
I will have won Rex." The little ormolu clock on the mantel chimed the hour of five. "Heavens!" she cried to herself, "Rex has been gone over two hours. I feel my heart must be bursting."
No one noticed Pluma"s anxiety. One moment hushed and laughing, the queen of mirth and revelry, then pale and silent, with shadowed eyes, furtively glancing down the broad, pebbled path that led to the entrance gate.
Yet, despite her bravery, Pluma"s face and lips turned white when she heard the confusion of her lover"s arrival.
Perhaps Pluma had never suffered more suspense in all her life than was crowded into those few moments.
Had he seen Lester Stanwick? Had he come to denounce her for her treachery, in his proud, clear voice, and declare the marriage broken off?
She dared not step forward to greet him, lest the piercing glance of his eyes would cause her to fall fainting at his feet.
"A guilty conscience needs no accuser." Most truly the words were exemplified in her case. Yet not one pang of remorse swept across her proud heart when she thought of the young girl whose life she had so skillfully blighted.
What was the love of Daisy Brooks, an unsophisticated child of nature, only the overseer"s niece, compared to her own mighty, absorbing pa.s.sion?
The proud, haughty heiress could not understand how Rex, polished, courteous and refined, could have stooped to such a reckless folly. He would thank her in years to come for sparing him from such a fate.
These were the thoughts she sought to console herself with.
She stood near the door when he entered, but he did not see her; a death-like pallor swept over her face, her dark eyes had a wild, perplexing look.
She was waiting in terrible suspense for Rex to call upon her name; ask where she was, or speak some word in which she could read her sentence of happiness or despair in the tone of his voice.
She could not even catch the expression of his face; it was turned from her. She watched him so eagerly she hardly dared draw her breath.
Rex walked quickly through the room, stopping to chat with this one or that one a moment; still, his face was not turned for a single instant toward the spot where she stood.
Was he looking for her? She could not tell. Presently he walked toward the conservatory, and a moment later Eve Glenn came tripping toward her.
"Oh, here you are!" she cried, flinging her arms about her in regular school-girl _abandon_, and kissing the cold, proud mouth, that deigned no answering caress. "Rex has been looking for you everywhere, and at last commissioned me to find you and say he wants to speak to you. He is out on the terrace."
How she longed to ask if Rex"s face was smiling or stern, but she dared not.
"Where did you say Rex was, Miss Glenn?"
"I said he was out on the terrace; but don"t call me Miss Glenn, for pity"s sake--it sounds so freezingly cold. Won"t you please call me Eve," cried the impetuous girl--"simply plain Eve? That has a more friendly sound, you know."
Another girl less proud than the haughty heiress would have kissed Eve"s pretty, piquant, upturned, roguish face.
"What did Rex have to say to her?" she asked herself, in growing dread.
The last hope seemed withering in her proud, pa.s.sionate heart. She rose haughtily, and walked with the dignity of a queen through the long drawing-room toward the terrace. Her heart almost stopped beating as she caught sight of Rex leaning so gracefully against the trunk of an old gnarled oak tree, smoking a cigar. That certainly did not look as if he meant to greet her with a kiss.
She went forward hesitatingly--a world of anxiety and suspense on her face--to know her fate. The color surged over her face, then receded from it again, as she looked at him with a smile--a smile that was more pitiful than a sigh.
"Rex," she cried, holding out her hands to him with a fluttering, uncertain movement that stirred the perfumed laces of the exquisite robe she wore, and the jewels on her white, nervous hands--"Rex, I am here!"
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
We must now return to Daisy, whom we left standing in the heart of the forest, the moonlight streaming on her upturned face, upon which the startled horseman gazed.
He had not waited for her to reply, but, touching his horse hastily with his riding-whip, he sped onward with the speed of the wind.
In that one instant Daisy had recognized the dark, sinister, handsome face of Lester Stanwick.
"They have searched the pit and found I was not there. He is searching for me; he has tracked me down!" she cried, vehemently, pressing her little white hands to her burning head.
Faster, faster flew the little feet through the long dew-damp gra.s.ses.
"My troubles seem closing more darkly around me," she sobbed. "I wish I had never been born, then I could never have spoiled Rex"s life. But I am leaving you, my love, my darling, so you can marry Pluma, the heiress. You will forget me and be happy."
Poor little, neglected, unloved bride, so fair, so young, so fragile, out alone facing the dark terrors of the night, fleeing from the young husband who was wearing his life out in grief for her. Ah, if the gentle winds sighing above her, or the solemn, nodding trees had only told her, how different her life might have been!
"No one has ever loved me but poor old Uncle John!" She bent her fair young head and cried out to Heaven: "Why has no mercy been shown to me? I have never done one wrong, yet I am so sorely tried. Oh, mother, mother!" she cried, raising her blue eyes up to the starry sky, "if you could have foreseen the dark, cruel shadows that would have folded their pitiless wings over the head of your child, would you not have taken me with you down into the depths of the seething waters?" She raised up her white hands pleadingly as though she would fain pierce with her wrongs the blue skies, and reach the great White Throne. "I must be going mad," she said. "Why did Rex seek me out?" she cried, in anguish. "Why did Heaven let me love him so madly, and my whole life be darkened by living apart from him if I am to live? I had no thought of suffering and sorrow when I met him that summer morning. Are the summer days to pa.s.s and never bring him? Are the flowers to bloom, the sun to shine, the years to come and go, yet never bring him once to me? I can not bear it--I do not know how to live!"
If she could only see poor old, faithful John Brooks again she would kneel at his feet just as she had done when she was a little child, lay her weary head down on his toil-hardened hand, tell him how she had suffered, and ask him how she could die and end it all.
She longed so hungrily for some one to caress her, murmuring tender words over her. She could almost hear his voice saying as she told him her pitiful story: "Come to my arms, pet, my poor little trampled Daisy! You shall never want for some one to love you while poor old Uncle John lives. Bless your dear little heart!"
The longing was strongly upon her. No one would recognize her--she _must_ go and see poor old John. She never thought what would become of her life after that.
At the station she asked for a ticket for Allendale. No one seemed to know of such a place. After a prolonged search on the map the agent discovered it to be a little inland station not far from Baltimore.
"We can sell you a ticket for Baltimore," he said, "and there you can purchase a ticket for the other road."
And once again poor little Daisy was whirling rapidly toward the scene of her first great sorrow.
Time seemed to slip by her unheeded during all that long, tedious journey of two nights and a day.
"Are you going to Baltimore?" asked a gentle-faced lady, who was strangely attracted to the beautiful, sorrowful young girl, in which all hope, life, and sunshine seemed dead.