She did not go into the waiting-room; she had quite forgotten she was not at the end of her journey.
She followed the crowds along the bustling street, a solitary, desolate, heart-broken girl, with a weary white face whose beautiful, tender eyes looked in vain among the throngs that passed her by for one kindly face or a sympathetic look.
Some pushed rudely by her, others looked into the beautiful face with an ugly smile. Handsomely got-up dandies, with fine clothes and no brains, nodded familiarly as Daisy passed them. Some laughed, and others scoffed and jeered; but not one––dear Heaven! not one among the vast throng gave her a kindly glance or a word. Occasionally one, warmer hearted 166 than the others, would look sadly on that desolate, beautiful, childish face.
A low moan she could scarcely repress broke from her lips. A handsomely dressed child, who was rolling a hoop in front of her, turned around suddenly and asked her if she was ill.
“Ill?” She repeated the word with a vague feeling of wonder. What was physical pain to the torture that was eating away her young life? Ill? Why, all the illness in the world put together could not cause the anguish she was suffering then––the sting of a broken heart.
She was not ill––only desolate and forsaken.
Poor Daisy answered in such a vague manner that she quite frightened the child, who hurried away as fast as she could with her hoop, pausing now and then to look back at the white, forlorn face on which the sunshine seemed to cast such strange shadows.
On and on Daisy walked, little heeding which way she went. She saw what appeared to be a park on ahead, and there she bent her steps. The shady seats among the cool green grasses under the leafy trees looked inviting. She opened the gate and entered. A sudden sense of dizziness stole over her, and her breath seemed to come in quick, convulsive gasps.
“Perhaps God has heard my prayer, Rex, my love,” she sighed. “I am sick and weary unto death. Oh, Rex––Rex––”
The beautiful eyelids fluttered over the soft, blue eyes, and with that dearly loved name on her lips, the poor little child-bride sunk down on the cold, hard earth in a death-like swoon.