Daisy drew her cloak closer about her, struggling bravely on through the storm and the darkness, her heart beating so loudly she wondered it did not break.
Poor child! how little she knew she was fast approaching the crisis of her life!
She remembered, with a little sob, the last time she had traversed that road––she was seated by John Brooks’s side straining her eyes toward the bend in the road, watching eagerly for the first glimpse of the magnolia-tree, and the handsome young husband waiting there.
Coy blushes suffused Daisy’s cheeks as she struggled on through the pouring rain. She forgot she was a wretched, unpitied, forsaken little bride, on a mission of such great importance. She was only a simple child, after all, losing sight of all the whole world, as her thoughts dwelt on the handsome young fellow, her husband in name only, whom she saw waiting for her at the trysting-place, looking so cool, so handsome and lovable in his white linen suit and blue tie; his white straw hat, with the blue-dotted band around it, lying on the green grass beside him, and the sunshine drifting through the green leaves on his smiling face and brown, curling hair.
“If Rex had only known I was innocent, he could not have judged me so harshly. Oh, my love––my love!” she cried out. “Heaven must have made us for each other, but a fate more cruel than death has torn us asunder. Oh, Rex, my love, if you had only been more patient with me!”
She crept carefully along the road through the intense darkness and the down-pouring rain. She knew every inch of the ground. She could not lose her way. She reached the turn in the road which was but a few feet distant from the magnolia-tree where first she had met Rex and where she had seen him last––a few steps more and she would reach it.
A blinding glare of lightning lighted up the scene for one brief instant; there was the tree, but, oh! was it only a fancy of her imagination? she thought she saw a man’s figure kneeling under it.
“Who was he, and what was he doing there?” she wondered. She stood rooted to the spot. “Perhaps he had taken refuge there from the fury of the storm.”
Daisy was a shrinking, timid little creature; she dared not 178 move a step further, although the golden moments that flitted by were as precious as her life-blood.
She drew back, faint with fear, among the protecting shadows of the trees. Another flash of light––the man was surely gathering wild flowers from the rain-drenched grass.