Hardly knowing what prompted him to do it, Rex turned the knob; it yielded to the touch, swinging slowly back on its creaking hinges.
“Good heavens!” he ejaculated, gazing wildly about him and as pale as death, “Daisy is gone and the cottage is empty!”
He leaned against the door-way, putting his hand to his brow like one who had received a heavy blow; and the bare walls seemed to take up the cry and echo, mockingly, “Gone!”
The blow was so sudden and unexpected he was completely bewildered; his brain was in a whirl.
He saw a laborer crossing the cotton-fields and called to him.
“I was looking for John Brooks,” said Rex. “I find the cottage empty. Can you tell me where they have gone?”
“Gone!” echoed the man, surprisedly. “I don’t understand it; I was passing the door a few hours since, just as the stage drove off with John Brooks and Daisy. ‘Good-bye, neighbor,’ he called out to me, ‘I am off on an extended business trip. You must bring your wife over to see Septima; she will be lonely, I’ll warrant.’ There was no sign of him moving then. I––I don’t understand it.”
“You say he took Daisy with him,” asked Rex, with painful eagerness. “Can you tell me where they went?”
The man shook his head and passed on. Rex was more mystified than ever.
“What can it all mean?” he asked himself. “Surely,” he cried, “Daisy––dear little innocent blue-eyed Daisy––could not have meant to deceive me; yet why has she not told me?”