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"No, you don't know what I mean; and little you thank me for carrying the treacherous secret since almost the hour of your birth. It is time for you to know the truth at last. You are not the heiress of Whitestone Hall you are not Basil Hurlhurst's child!" Pluma's face grew deathly white; a strange mist seemed gathering before her.
No one remembered having seen her but once, quite five years before. A beautiful woman with a little babe had suddenly appeared at Whitestone Hall, announcing herself as Basil Hurlhurst's wife.
"You will not let my Rex know until I am far away," she cried, piteously, as she put her marriage certificate in Mr. Hurlhurst's hand. "I am going to send for Rex to come here at once," he made answer. With a low, agonized moan, Daisy grasped his outstretched hand, scarcely knowing what she did. "Oh, please do not, Mr. Hurlhurst," she sobbed.
The dark frown on the child's face never relaxed, and, with an impatient gesture, her father ordered her taken at once from the room. Suddenly the great bells of Whitestone Hall ceased pealing for the joyous birth of Basil Hurlhurst's daughter, and bitter cries of a strong man in mortal anguish rent the air. No one had noticed how or when the sweet, golden-haired young wife had died.
Inside and outside of Whitestone Hall fairly glowed with brilliancy and bloom. Rex's deportment toward his promised bride was exemplary; he did his best to show her every possible attention and kindness in lieu of the love which should have been hers. There seemed to be no cloud in Pluma Hurlhurst's heaven.
He stood before her, his arms folded across his breast, yet no pang of remorse crept into Pluma Hurlhurst's relentless heart for the cruel blow she was about to deal him. "I must begin at the time of the lawn fête," she said. "That morning a woman begged to see me, sobbing so piteously I could not refuse her an audience.
Mrs. Corliss knew but too well the child would keep her word. No power, save God, could stay the turbulent current of the ungovernable self-will which would drag her on to her doom. No human being could hold in subjection the fierce, untamed will of the beautiful, youthful tyrant. There had been strange rumors of the unhappiness of Basil Hurlhurst's former marriage.
Rex did not seek to detain her; his eyes had suddenly fallen upon the golden-haired little figure kneeling by Basil Hurlhurst's chair. He reached her side at a single bound. "Oh, Daisy, my darling, my darling!" he cried, snatching her in his arms, and straining her to his breast, as he murmured passionate, endearing words over her. Suddenly he turned to Mr. Hurlhurst. "I must explain "
It was a mad, foolish fancy, yet it was the one consolation of Basil Hurlhurst's weary, tempest tossed life. No wonder he set his teeth hard together as he listened to the cold words of the proud, peerless beauty before him, who bore every lineament of her mother's dark, fatal beauty this daughter who scornfully spoke of the hour when he should die as of some happy, long-looked-for event.
Poor Rex! he little knew this was but the first stroke of Pluma Hurlhurst's fatal revenge to remove her rival from her path that she might win him back to his old allegiance. Early that morning there had been great bustle and stir in the Brooks' cottage.
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