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"I am sure I do not mean to make a hermit of myself because you are too old to enjoy the brightness of youth," she flashed out, defiantly; "and you ought not to expect it it is mean and contemptible of you." "Pluma!" echoed Basil Hurlhurst, in astonishment, his noble face growing white and stern with suppressed excitement, "not another word." Pluma tossed her head contemptuously.
Any one who saw Pluma Hurlhurst when she entered the drawing-room among her merry-hearted guests, would have said that she had never shed a tear or known a sigh. Could that be the same creature upon whose prostrate figure and raining tears the sunshine had so lately fallen? No one could have told that the brightness, the smiles, and the gay words were all forced.
"Buried, sir, beneath yonder willow." "And the babe?" he cried, eagerly. "Dead," answered Hagar, softly. "Both are buried in one grave." Basil Hurlhurst turned his face to the wall, with a bitter groan. Heaven forgive them the seeds of the bitterest of tragedies were irrevocably sown.
Stanwick has been to me." The three sisters looked at one another in silent wonder over the rims of their spectacles and shook their heads ominously. Dear reader, we must return at this period to Rex poor, broken-hearted Rex whom we left in the company of Pluma Hurlhurst in the spacious parlor of Whitestone Hall. "Daisy Brooks is at this moment with Lester Stanwick!
Basil Hurlhurst had no idea the conversation carried on in the small apartment to which he had conducted them could be overheard from the curtained recess in which Daisy sat. But he was mistaken; Daisy could hear every word of it. She dared not cry out or walk forth from her place of concealment lest she should come suddenly face to face with Rex.
In an elegant apartment of the Hall Basil Hurlhurst, the recluse invalid, lay upon his couch, trying to shut out the mirth and gayety that floated up to him from below. As the sound of Pluma's voice sounded upon his ear he turned his face to the wall with a bitter groan. "She is so like " he muttered, grimly. "Ah! the pleasant voices of our youth turn into lashes which scourge us in our old age.
"Yes, tell me," his mother said, hoarsely. Without lifting up his bowed head, or raising his voice, which was strangely sad and low, Rex told his story every word of it: how his heart had went out to the sweet-faced, golden-haired little creature whom he found fast asleep under the blossoming magnolia-tree in the morning sunshine; how he protected the shrinking, timid little creature from the cruel insults of Pluma Hurlhurst; how he persuaded her to marry him out in the starlight, and how they had agreed to meet on the morrow that morrow on which he found the cottage empty and his child-bride gone; of his search for her, and oh, cruelest and bitterest of all! where and with whom he found her; how he had left her lying among the clover, loving her too madly to curse her, yet praying Heaven to strike him dead then and there.
The merry, laughing brown eyes looked silent and grave enough now, and the lips the drooping brown mustache covered rarely smiled. Even his voice seemed to have a deeper tone. He had done the one thing that morning which his mother had asked him to do with her dying breath he had asked Pluma Hurlhurst to be his wife.
John Brooks had quietly withdrawn from the room; and while Basil Hurlhurst with a proudly glowing face went down among the waiting and expectant guests to unfold to them the marvelous story, and explain why the marriage could not take place, the detective briefly acquainted Rex with the wonderful story.
He is reckless and willful, yet kind of heart. For long years I have set my heart upon this marriage between Rex and Pluma Hurlhurst. I say again it must be!" Mrs. Lyon idolized her only son. "He would be a fitting mate for a queen," she told herself. The proud, peerless beauty of the haughty young heiress of Whitestone Hall pleased her. "She and no other shall be Rex's wife," she said.
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