While Rex was penning his all-important letter in his room, Pluma was
walking restlessly to and fro in her boudoir, conning over in her mind
the events of the evening.
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 balls 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 pass. 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 passions!"
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 pass. 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 passionate, 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 pronounced 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
passionate, loving words over them," she almost cried aloud in her
fierce, angry passion. 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 passionately. 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
butterflies 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 passion, 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 passion
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
passionate 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 cluster of golden-hearted daisies.
That sight froze the light in her dark, passionate 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.
"Nothing," she replied, keeping her eyes fastened as if fascinated on
the offending daisies he wore on his breast.
"I left you an hour ago smiling and happy. I find you white and worn.
There are strange lights in your eyes like the slumbrous fire of a
volcano; even your voice seems to have lost its tenderness. What is
it, Pluma?"
She raised her dark, proud face to his. There was a strange story
written on it, but he could not tell what it was.
"It--it is nothing. The day is warm, and I am tired, that is all."
"You are not like the same Pluma who kissed me when I was going away,"
he persisted. "Since I left this house something has come between you
and me. What is it, Pluma?"
She looked up to him with a proud gesture that was infinitely
charming.
"Is anything likely to come between us?" she asked.
"No; not that I know of," he answered, growing more and more puzzled.
"Then why imagine it?" she asked.
"Because you are so changed, Pluma," he said. "I shall never perhaps
know the cause of your strange manner toward me, but I shall always
feel sure it is something which concerns myself. You look at me as
though you were questioning me," he said. "I wish you would tell me
what is on your mind?"
"I do not suppose it could make the least difference," she answered,
passionately. "Yes, I will tell you, what you must have been blind not
to notice long ago. Have you not noticed how every one watches us with
a peculiar smile on their lips as we come among them; and how their
voices sink to a whisper lest we should overhear what they say? What
is commented upon by my very guests, and the people all about us?
Listen, then, it is this: Rex Lyon does not love the woman he has
asked to be his wife. The frosts of Iceland could not be colder than
his manner toward her. They say, too, that I have given you the truest
and deepest love of my heart, and have received nothing in return.
Tell me that it is all false, my darling. You do care for me, do you
not, Rex? Tell me," she implored.
"Good heavens!" cried Rex, almost speechless in consternation; "do
they dare say such things? I never thought my conduct could give rise
to one reproach, one unkind thought."
"Tell me you do care for me, Rex," she cried. "I have been almost mad
with doubt."
There was something in the lovely face, in the tender, pleading eyes,
and quivering, scarlet mouth, that looked as if it were made for
kisses--that Rex would have had to have been something more than
mortal man to have resisted her pleading with sighs and tears for his
love, and refuse it, especially as she had every reason to expect it,
as he had asked her to be his wife. There was such a look of
unutterable love on her face it fairly bewildered him. The passion in
her voice startled him. What was he to do with this impetuous girl?
Rex looked as if he felt exceedingly uncomfortable.
He took her in his arms and kissed her mechanically; he knew that was
what she wanted and what she expected him to do.
"This must be my answer, dear," he said, holding her in a close
embrace.
In that brief instant she had torn the daisies from the lapel of his
coat with her white, jeweled fingers, tossed them to the earth, and
stamped her dainty feet upon them, wishing in the depths of her soul
she could crush out all remembrance from his heart of the young girl
for whose memory this handsome lover of hers wore these wild blossoms
on his breast.
As Rex looked down into her face he missed them, and quickly unclasped
his arms from around her with a little cry.
Stooping down he instantly recovered his crushed treasures and lifted
them reverently in his hand with a sigh.
"I can not say that I admire your taste, Rex," she said, with a short,
hard laugh, that somehow grated harshly on her lover's ears. "The
conservatories are blooming with rare and odorous flowers, yet you
choose these obnoxious plants; they are no more or less than a species
of weeds. Never wear them again, Rex--I despise them--throw them away,
and I will gather you a rare bouquet of white hyacinths and starry
jasmine and golden-rod bells."
The intense quiver in her voice pained him, and he saw her face wore
the pallor of death, and her eyes were gleaming like restless fire.
"I will not wear them certainly if you dislike them, Pluma," he said,
gravely, "but I do not care to replace them by any other; daisies are
the sweetest flowers on earth for me."
He did not fasten them on his coat again, but transferred them to his
breast-pocket. She bit her scarlet lips in impotent rage.
In the very moment of her supreme triumph and happiness he had
unclasped his arms from about her to pick up the daisies she had
crushed with her tiny heel--those daisies which reminded him of that
other love that still reigned in his heart a barrier between them.