“Do not take him from me––he is my world––I love him!”
And with a heart racked by terrible jealousy, Pluma turned uneasily on her pillow and opened her eyes. The stars were still glimmering in the moonlighted sky.
“Is the face of Daisy Brooks ever to haunt me thus?” she cried out, impatiently. “How was I to know she was to die?” she muttered, excitedly. “I simply meant to have Stanwick abduct her from the seminary that Rex might believe him her lover and turn to me for sympathy. I will not think of it,” she cried; “I am not one to flinch from a course of action I have marked out for myself, no matter what the consequences may be, if I only gain Rex’s love.”
And Pluma, the bride soon to be, turned her flushed face again to the wall to dream again of Daisy Brooks.
She little dreamed Rex, too, was watching the stars, as wakeful as she, thinking of the past.
Then he prayed Heaven to help him, so that no unworthy thought should enter his mind. After that he slept, and one of the most painful days of his life was ended.
The days at Whitestone Hall flew by on rapid wings in a round of gayety. The Hall was crowded with young folks, who were to remain until after the marriage. Dinner parties were followed by May-pole dances out on the green lawns, and by charades and balls in the evening. The old Hall had never echoed with such frolicsome mirth before. Rex plunged into the excitement with strange zest. No one guessed that beneath his winning, careless smile his heart was almost breaking.
One morning Pluma was standing alone on the vine-covered terrace, waiting for Rex, who had gone out to try a beautiful spirited horse that had just been added to the stables of Whitestone Hall. She noticed he had taken the unfrequented road the magnolia-trees shaded. That fact bore no significance, 139 certainly; still there was a strong feeling of jealousy in her heart as she remembered that little wooden cross he would be obliged to pass. Would he stop there? She could not tell.
“How I love him––and how foolish I am!” she laughed, nervously. “I have no rival, yet I am jealous of his very thoughts, lest they dwell on any one else but myself. I do not see how it is,” she said, thoughtfully, to herself, “why people laugh at love, and think it weakness or a girl’s sentimental folly. Why, it is the strongest of human passions!”
She heard people speak of her approaching marriage as “a grand match”––she heard him spoken of as a wealthy Southerner, and she laughed a proud, happy, rippling laugh. She was marrying Rex for love; she had given him the deepest, truest love of her heart.