The proud, beautiful girl, radiant with love and happiness a short time since, with a great cry flung herself down among the ferns, the sunlight gleaming on the jewels, the sumptuous morning dress, the crushed roses, and the white, despairing face.
Any one who saw Pluma Hurlhurst when she entered the drawing-room among her merry-hearted guests, would have said that she had never shed a tear or known a sigh. Could that be the same creature upon whose prostrate figure and raining tears the sunshine had so lately fallen? No one could have told that the brightness, the smiles, and the gay words were all forced. No one could have guessed that beneath the brilliant manner there was a torrent of dark, angry passions and an agony of fear.
It was pitiful to see how her eyes wandered toward the door. Hour after hour passed, and still Rex had not returned.
The hum of girlish voices around her almost made her brain reel. Grace Alden and Miss Raynor were singing a duet at the piano. The song they were singing fell like a death-knell upon her ears; it was “‘He Cometh Not,’ She Said.”
Eve Glenn, with Birdie upon her lap, sat on an adjoining sofa flirting desperately with the two or three devoted beaus; every one was discussing the prospect of the coming morrow.
Her father had returned from Baltimore some time since. She was too much engrossed with her thoughts of Rex to notice the great change in him––the strange light in his eyes, or the wistful, expectant expression of his face, as he kissed her more fondly than he had ever done in his life before.
She gave appropriate answers to her guests grouped around her, but their voices seemed afar off. Her heart and her thoughts were with Rex. Why had he not returned? What was detaining him? Suppose anything should happen––it would kill her now––yet nothing could go wrong on the eve of her wedding-day. She would not believe it. Stanwick would not dare go to Rex with such a story––he would write 160 it––and all those things took time. With care and caution and constant watching she would prevent Rex from receiving any communications whatever until after the ceremony; then she could breathe freely, for the battle so bravely fought would be won.
“If to-morrow is as bright as to-day, Pluma will have a glorious wedding-day,” said Bessie Glenn, smiling up into the face of a handsome young fellow who was fastening a rosebud she had just given him in the lapel of his coat with one hand, and with the other tightly clasping the white fingers that had held the rose.
He did not notice that Pluma stood in the curtained recesses of an adjoining window as he answered, carelessly enough:
“Of course, I hope it will be a fine, sunshiny day, but the indications of the weather don’t look exactly that way, if I am any judge.”