“What in the world could he want with them?” cried Grace, incredulously.
“Want with them!” echoed Miss Raynor. “Why, he pressed them to his lips, murmuring passionate, loving words over them. For one brief instant his face was turned toward me, and I saw there were tears standing in his eyes, and there was a look on his face I shall never forget to my dying day. There was such hopeless woe upon it––indeed one might have almost supposed, by the expression of his face, he was waiting for his death-sentence to be pronounced instead of a marriage ceremony, which was to give him the queenly heiress of Whitestone Hall for a bride.”
“Perhaps there is some hidden romance in the life of handsome Rex the world does not know of,” suggested Grace, sagely.
“I hope not,” replied Miss Raynor. “I would hate to be a rival of Pluma Hurlhurst’s. I have often thought, as I watched her with Rex, it must be terrible to worship one person so madly. I have often thought Pluma’s a perilous love.”
“Do not speak so,” cried Grace. “You horrify me. Whenever I see her face I am afraid those words will be ringing in my ears––a perilous love.”
Miss Raynor made some laughing rejoinder which Pluma, white and trembling behind the ivy vines, did not catch, and still discussing the affair, they moved on, leaving Pluma Hurlhurst standing alone, face to face with the truth, which she had hoped against hope was false. Rex, who was so soon to be her husband, was certainly not her lover.
Her keen judgment had told her long ago all this had come about through his mother’s influence.
Every word those careless lips had uttered came back to her heart with a cruel stab.
“Even my guests are noticing his coldness,” she cried, with a hysterical little sob. “They are saying to each other, ‘He 141 does not love me’––I, who have counted my triumphs by the scores. I have revealed my love in every word, tone and glance, but I can not awaken one sentiment in his proud, cold heart.”
When she remembered the words, “He pressed them to his lips, murmuring passionate, loving words over them,” she almost cried aloud in her fierce, angry passion. She knew, just as well as though she had witnessed him herself, that those wild flowers were daisies, and she knew, too, why he had kissed them so passionately. She saw the sun shining on the trees, the flower-beds were great squares and circles of color, the fountains sparkled in the sunlight, and restless butterflies flitted hither and thither.