No wonder he set his teeth hard together as he listened to the cold words of the proud, peerless beauty before him, who bore every lineament of her mother’s dark, fatal beauty––this daughter who scornfully spoke of the hour when he should die as of some happy, long-looked-for event.
Those waving cotton-fields that stretched out on all sides as far as the eye could reach, like a waving field of snow, laid waste beneath the fire fiend’s scorching breath! Never––never!
Then and there the proud, self-conscious young heiress lost all chances of reigning a regal queen, by fair means, of Whitestone Hall.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The servant who opened the door for Daisy looked earnestly at the fair, pleading young face, framed in rings of golden hair, so pure and spiritual that it looked like an angel’s with the soft white moonlight falling over it.
“You will not refuse me,” she repeated, timidly. “I must speak to Mrs. Lyon.”
“You have come too late,” he replied, gently; “Mrs. Lyon is dead.”
The man never forgot the despairing look of horror that deepened in the childish blue eyes raised to his.