“Oh, Heaven, Rex!” she cried, “what does that look on your face mean? What is it?”
The look of terror on her face seemed to force the mad words from his lips, the magnetic gaze seemed to hold him spellbound. He bent over hie mother and laid his fresh, brave young face on the cold, white face of his dying mother.
“Promise me, Rex,” she whispered.
“I promise, mother!” he cried. “God help me; if it will make your last moments happier, I consent.”
“Heaven bless you, my noble son!” whispered the quivering voice. “You have taken the bitter sting from death, and filled my heart with gratitude. Some day you will thank me for it, Rex.”
They were uttered! Oh, fatal words! Poor Rex, wedded 102 and parted, his love-dream broken, how little he knew of the bitter grief which was to accrue from that promise wrung from his white lips.
Like one in a dream he heard her murmur the name of Pluma Hurlhurst. The power of speech seemed denied him; he knew what she meant. He bowed his head on her cold hands.
“I have no heart to give her,” he said, brokenly. “My heart is with Daisy, my sweet little lost love.”
Poor Rex! how little he knew Daisy was at that self-same moment watching with beating heart the faint light of his window through the branches of the trees––Daisy, whom he mourned as dead, alas! dead to him forever, shut out from his life by the rash words of that fatally cruel promise.