For Pluma Hurlhurst, after that hour, the sunshine never had the same light, the flowers the same color, her face the same smile, or her heart the same joyousness.
Never did “good and evil” fight for a human heart as they struggled in that hour in the heart of the beautiful, willful heiress. All the fire, the passion, and recklessness of her nature were aroused.
“I will make him love me or I will die!” she cried, vehemently. “The love I long for shall be mine. I swear it, cost what it may!”
She was almost terribly beautiful to behold, as that war of passion raged within her.
She saw a cloud of dust arising in the distance. She knew it was Rex returning, but no bright flush rose to her cheek as she remembered what Miss Raynor had said of the wild flowers he had so rapturously caressed––he had given a few rank wild flowers the depths of a passionate love which he had never shown to her, whom he had asked to be his wife.
She watched him as he approached nearer and nearer, so handsome, so graceful, so winning, one of his white hands carelessly resting on the spirited animal’s proudly arched, glossy neck, and with the other raising his hat from his brown curls in true courtly cavalier fashion to her, as he saw her standing there, apparently awaiting him on the rose-covered terrace.
He looked so handsome and lovable Pluma might have forgotten her grievance had she not at that moment espied, fastened to the lapel of his coat, a cluster of golden-hearted daisies.
That sight froze the light in her dark, passionate eyes and the welcome that trembled on her scarlet lips.
He leaped lightly from the saddle, and came quickly forward to meet her, and then drew back with a start.