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She fairly held her breath with intense interest. Then she heard the detective tell them the story of Rex Lyon's marriage with her, and he had come to Whitestone Hall to stop the ceremony about to be performed. Basil Hurlhurst scarcely heeded his words. He had risen to his feet with a great, glad cry, and pushed aside the silken curtains that led to the study.
What care I for your cotton fields, or for Whitestone Hall?" she cried, proudly, drawing herself up to her full height. "You have always hated me, Basil Hurlhurst," she cried, turning haughtily toward him. "This is your triumph! Within the next hour I shall be Rex Lyon's wife."
"About daybreak we passed through Hell Gate, with a kiting breeze, and were pointing for Whitestone, where we proposed to show the following night. We reached there some time in the forenoon. Fancy our dismay when we learned that North's Circus was billed there the same evening.
In that one moment a wild, bitter thought swept across her heart. Did Rex regret their marriage because she was poor, friendless, and an orphan? Would it have been different if she had been the heiress of Whitestone Hall? She pitied herself for her utter loneliness.
Without another word the stranger turned and walked slowly down the path and away from Whitestone Hall. "Fool that I was!" she muttered through her clinched teeth. "I might have foreseen this. But I will haunt the place day and night until I see you, proud heiress of Whitestone Hall. We shall see time will tell." Meanwhile Mrs. Corliss, the housekeeper, was staring after her with wondering eyes.
He clasped the little jeweled hands that lay so confidingly within his own still closer, saying he knew she could not help but succeed. The whole country-side was ringing with the coming marriage. No one could be more popular than handsome Rex Lyon, no one admired more than the young heiress of Whitestone Hall.
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.
'When one rival leaves the field, another one is sure to come to the fore. That's a true saying," said Gertie, meditatively. "You see, he did not marry the heiress of Whitestone Hall. So he is still in the market, to be captured by some lucky girl." "Well, if I am the lucky one, you must forgive me, Gertie. All is fair in love and war, you know.
On the night my lost child was born I made my will, leaving Whitestone Hall and the Hurlhurst Plantations to the child just born, and the remainder of my vast estates I bequeathed to my daughter Pluma. I believed my little child buried with its mother, and in all these years that followed I never changed that will it still stands. My daughter Pluma is to be married to-morrow night.
The Sioux have a curious superstition respecting a mound near the mouth of the Whitestone River, which they call the Mountain of Little People or Little Spirits; they believe that it is the abode of little devils in the human form, of about eighteen inches high and with remarkably large heads; they are armed with sharp arrows, in the use of which they are very skilful.