“He sought to save me from being taken back when he called me his wife,” she thought. “He believed I was free to woo and win, because I dared not tell him I was Rex’s wife.” Yet the thought of Stanwick always brought a shudder to her 126 pure young mind. She could not understand why he would have resorted to such desperate means to gain an unwilling bride.
“Not yet seventeen. Ah, what a sad love-story hers had been. How cruelly love’s young dream had been blighted,” she told herself; and yet she would not have exchanged that one thrilling, ecstatic moment of rapture when Rex had clasped her in his arms and whispered: “My darling wife,” for a whole lifetime of calm happiness with any one else.
On and on she walked through the violet-studded grass, thinking––thinking. Strange fancies came thronging to her overwrought brain. She pushed her veil back from her face and leaned against the trunk of a tree; her brain was dizzy and her thoughts were confused; the very stars seemed dancing riotously in the blue sky above her, and the branches of the trees were whispering strange fancies. Suddenly a horseman, riding a coal-black charger, came cantering swiftly up the long avenue of trees. He saw the quiet figure standing leaning against the drooping branches.
“I will inquire the way,” he said to himself, drawing rein beside her. “Can you tell me, madame, if this is the most direct road leading to Glengrove and that vicinity? I am looking for a hostelry near it. I seem to have lost my way. Will you kindly direct me?” he asked, “or to the home of Mr. Rex Lyon?”
The voice sounded strangely familiar to Daisy. She was dimly conscious some one was speaking to her. She raised her face up and gazed at the speaker. The cold, pale moonlight fell full upon it, clearly revealing its strange, unearthly whiteness, and the bright flashing eyes, gazing dreamily past the terror-stricken man looking down on her, with white, livid lips and blanched, horror-stricken face. His eyes almost leaped from their sockets in abject terror, as Lester Stanwick gazed on the upturned face by the roadside.
“My God, do I dream?” he cried, clutching at the pommel of his saddle. “Is this the face of Daisy Brooks, or is it a specter, unable to sleep in the depths of her tomb, come back to haunt me for driving her to her doom?”
CHAPTER XXVI.
Rex and Pluma talked for some time out in the moonlight, then Rex excused himself, and on the plea of having important business letters to write retired to the library.