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Basil Hurlhurst lived over again in those few moments the terrible folly that had cursed his youth, as he watched the passion-rocked face before him. "Youth is blind and will not see," had been too bitterly true with him. It was in his college days, when the world seemed all gayety, youth and sunshine to him, he first met the beautiful face that was to darken all of his after life.
"My surprise knew no bounds when I found it was given out the child had died, and was buried with its young mother. I never understood why Basil Hurlhurst did not attempt to recover his child. "I took the child far from here, placing it in a basket on the river brink, with a note pinned to it saying that I, the mother, had sinned and had sought a watery grave beneath the waves.
There had been a fierce, stormy interview, and on that very night Basil Hurlhurst took his wife and child abroad; those who had once seen the dark, glorious, scornful beauty of the woman's face never forgot it. Two years later the master had returned alone with the little child, heavily draped in widower's weeds.
"'Do not leave me, Lester, she said; 'I want to see you; remain until after all the guests have left. "I did so. You have read the lines: "'Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned'? "They were too truly exemplified in the case of Pluma Hurlhurst when she found you preferred little golden-haired Daisy Brooks to her own peerless self.
"That is quite unnecessary, Rex, my boy," said Mr. Tudor, stepping forward with tears in his eyes; "Mr. Hurlhurst knows all." It never occurred to handsome, impulsive Rex to question what Daisy was doing there. He only knew Heaven had restored him his beautiful, idolized child-bride. "You will forgive my harshness, won't you, love?" he pleaded. "I will devote my whole life to blot out the past.
Hurlhurst is a widower something of a recluse, and an invalid, I have heard; he has a daughter called Pluma." "Yes, madame," Daisy made answer, "I have met Miss Hurlhurst, but not her father." How bitterly this stranger's words seemed to mock her!
"My God!" cried Basil Hurlhurst, starting to his feet, pale as death, his eyes fairly burning, and the veins standing out on his forehead like cords, "you do not know what you say, woman! My little child Evalia's child and mine not dead, but stolen on the night its mother died! My God! it can not be; surely you are mad!" he shrieked. "It is true, master," she moaned, "true as Heaven."
"Listen, Basil Hurlhurst," she said, fixing her strangely bright eyes upon his noble, care-worn face; "this is the secret I have carried in this bosom for nearly seventeen years: 'Your golden-haired young wife died on that terrible stormy night you brought her to Whitestone Hall; but listen, Basil, 'the child did not! It was stolen from our midst on the night the fair young mother died."
Hurlhurst," cried Birdie, her little, white, scared face peering in at the door, "won't you please come quick? Mrs. Corliss, the housekeeper, has fainted ever so long ago, and I can't bring her to!"
As he did so he came face to face with Daisy Brooks, standing motionless, like a statue, before him. Then she fell, with a low, gasping cry, senseless at Basil Hurlhurst's feet. Pluma Hurlhurst received her father's summons with no little surprise. "What can that foolish old man want, I wonder?" she soliloquized, clasping the diamond-studded bracelets on her perfect arms.
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