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"Pluma!" he cried, hoarsely, rising to his feet and drawing his stately, commanding figure to its full height, "I will not brook such language from a child who should at least yield me obedience, if not love. You are not the heiress of Whitestone Hall yet, and you never may be.
"Who are you?" questioned the woman, in the same low, guarded voice. The child threw her head back proudly, her voice rising shrilly above the wild warring of the elements, as she answered: "Know, then, I am Pluma, the heiress of Whitestone Hall."
"Women have faced more deadly peril than this," she muttered, "and cleverly outwitted ingenious foes. I must win by stratagem." She quickly followed the tall figure down the path that divided the little garden from the shrubbery. "I knew you would not refuse me, Pluma," he said, clasping her hands and kissing her cold lips.
Still Daisy sat with her hands crossed in her lap, gazing intently at the window, where she had seen Pluma standing with Rex, her husband. A hand turned the knob of her door. "Oh, dear me," cried Gertie, "you are all in the dark. I do not see you. Are you here, Daisy Brooks?" "Yes," said Daisy, controlling her voice by a violent effort. "Won't you sit down? I will light the gas."
"She has settled it beyond a doubt is not that what you mean, Rex?" she asked, looking him squarely in the face, with a peculiar glitter in her sparkling dark eyes. "There is something you are keeping from me, Pluma," cried Rex, seizing both of her hands, and gazing anxiously into the false, fair, smiling, treacherous face. "You know where Daisy has gone in Heaven's name, tell me!
"I can not seem to grasp what you mean, or who you are to terrify me so." A mocking smile played about the woman's lips as she replied, in a slow, even, distinct voice: "I am your mother, Pluma!"
Rex," she said, drawing him down on the sofa beside her, and holding his strong white hands tightly clasped in her own, "I do not want to tease you or bring up an unpleasant subject, but I had so hoped, my boy, you would not come alone. I have hoped and prayed, morning and night, you would bring home a bride, and that bride would be Pluma Hurlhurst." Rex staggered from her arms with a groan.
All the young girls hovered constantly around Pluma, in girl-fashion admiring the costume, the veil, the wreath, and above all the radiantly beautiful girl who was to wear them. Even the Glenn girls and Grace Alden were forced to admit the willful young heiress would make the most peerless bride they had ever beheld.
Meanwhile Pluma had arisen from her knees with a gay, mocking laugh, turning suddenly to the startled group about her. "Bravo! bravo! Miss Pluma," cried Lester Stanwick, stepping to her side at that opportune moment. "On the stage you would have made a grand success.
Wherefore it was well said by the learned Alciato when speaking of men of beautiful genius, born in poverty, who are not able to raise themselves, because, in proportion as they are impelled upwards by the wings of their genius, so are they held down by their poverty Ut me pluma levat, sic grave mergit onus.
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