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Rex bit his lip in annoyance, but he was too courteous to openly express his thoughts; he merely bowed again. He meant Pluma should understand all thoughts of love or tenderness must forever more be a dead letter between them. "My mother!" he repeated, wonderingly; "pardon me, I do not understand." For answer she drew his mother's letter from her bosom and placed it in his hands.
When Rex accepted the invitation to visit Whitestone Hall she smiled complacently. "It can end in but one way," she told herself; "Rex will bring Pluma home as his bride." Quite unknown to him, his elegant home had been undergoing repairs for months.
"Where are you going, Rex?" said Pluma, laying a detaining hand upon his arm. "I am going to Elmwood," he cried, bitterly, "to prove this accusation is a cruel falsehood. Daisy has no lover; she is as sweet and pure as Heaven itself! I was mad to doubt her for a single instant."
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.
She wasted no more time in thinking, she must act. "I can not go to poor old Uncle John first," she told herself. "I must go at once to Pluma. Heaven give me strength to do it. Rex will never know, and I can go quietly out of his life again." The marriage must not be!
"Pluma come here instantly!" There was a subtle something in the stranger's voice that throbbed through the child's pulses like leaping fire a strange, mysterious influence that bound her, heart and soul, like the mesmeric influence a serpent exerts over a fascinated dove.
In the house lights were moving to and fro, while servants, with bated breath and light footfalls, hurried through the long corridors toward her father's room. No one seemed to notice Pluma, in her dripping robe, creeping slowly along by their side toward her own little chamber. It was quite midnight when her father sent for her. Pluma suffered him to kiss her, giving back no answering caress.
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.
She raises the brass knocker with a quick, imperative touch. After a wait of perhaps ten minutes or so Septima answers the summons, but the candle she holds nearly drops from her hands as she beholds the face of her midnight visitor in the dim, uncertain flickering glare of the candle-light. "Miss Pluma," she exclaims, in amazement, "is there any one ill at the Hall?"
I can not endure the suspense do not torture me, Pluma! I will forget you have spoken unkindly of poor little Daisy if you will only tell me where she has gone." "Sit down, Rex," she said, soothingly; "I will not dare tell you while you look at me with such a gleaming light in your eyes. Promise not to interrupt me to the end." A nameless dread was clutching at his heart-strings.
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