“Oh, dear!” cried Daisy, laying her pink cheek down on the letter she was writing to Rex, “I feel as though I could do something very desperate to get away from here––and––and––back to Rex. Poor fellow!” she sighed, “I wonder what he thought, as the hours rolled by and I did not come? Of course he went over to the cottage,” she mused, “and Septima must have told him where I had gone. Rex will surely come for me to-morrow,” she told herself, with a sweet, shy blush.
She read and reread the letter her trembling little hands had penned with many a heart-flutter. It was a shy, sweet little letter, beginning with “Dear Mr. Rex,” and ending with, “Yours sincerely, Daisy.” It was just such a dear, timid letter as many a pure, fresh-hearted loving young girl would write, brimful of the love which filled her guileless heart for her handsome, debonair Rex––with many allusions to the secret between them which weighed so heavily on her heart, sealing her lips for his dear sake.
After sealing and directing her precious letter, and placing it in the letter-bag which hung at the lower end of the corridor, Daisy hurried back to her own apartment and crept softly into her little white bed, beside Sara, and was soon fast asleep, dreaming of Rex and a dark, haughty, scornful face falling between them and the sunshine––the cold, mocking face of Pluma Hurlhurst.
Mme. Whitney, as was her custom, always looked over the 43 out-going mail early in the morning, sealing the letters of which she approved, and returning, with a severe reprimand, those which did not come up to the standard of her ideas.
“What is this?” she cried, in amazement, turning the letter Daisy had written in her hand. “Why, I declare, it is actually sealed!” Without the least compunction she broke the seal, grimly scanning its contents from beginning to end. If there was anything under the sun the madame abominated it was love-letters.
It was an established fact that no tender billets-doux found their way from the academy; the argus-eyed madame was too watchful for that.
With a lowering brow, she gave the bell-rope a hasty pull.
“Jenkins,” she said to the servant answering her summons, “send Miss Brooks to me here at once!”
“Poor little thing!” cried the sympathetic Jenkins to herself. “I wonder what in the world is amiss now? There’s fire in the madame’s eye. I hope she don’t intend to scold poor little Daisy Brooks.” Jenkins had taken a violent fancy to the sweet-faced, golden-haired, timid young stranger.
“It must be something terrible, I’m sure!” cried Sara, when she heard the madame had sent for Daisy; while poor Daisy’s hand trembled so––she could scarcely tell why––that she could hardly bind up the golden curls that fell down to her waist in a wavy, shining sheen.