"No, it would be cruel now, and once they and I are married, all that
will be over."
When the visitors had gone, Daisy went up to her bedroom, and took from
a little drawer a note which she had received the previous night. It
ran as follows:--
"You know how I love you, and how I have watched for weeks for a chance
to speak to you. I have been night after night at the old places,
believing you would come, but not one glance have I had of you, not one
word. Dearest Daisy, by all our old meetings, I ask you to give me one
more. Don't heed the chatter of the place, but come up to the old spot
as soon as you receive this, for I am obliged to write. If too late I
will be there to-morrow night. Only come and say one loving word to me,
and all you have heard shall be as nothing. I cannot live without you,
so come, and if you will I am ready to take you anywhere--far away, as I
have promised you before."
Daisy sat looking at the letter, and read it again and again.
"Only to think," she said at last; "a few months ago I should have
sighed and sobbed over that note, and been almost ready to be dragged by
him where he would, while now--it makes me almost sick. What could I
have seen in his soft boyish face to make me feel as I did. But what
shall I do? It seems cruel to let that poor girl go to the church with
such a man, only that she might save him. And suppose he makes her
miserable for life."
Daisy turned pale, and sat thinking till she heard her father call, and
then she hastily thrust the letter into her bosom, her face grew
radiant, and she hurried down, for her father's words had been--
"Daisy, lass, here's Tom!"
Volume 3, Chapter XVI.