As if in answer to the question that was trembling upon Daisy’s lips, he continued:
“I am stopping at a boarding-place some little distance from here. This is not Baltimore, but a little station some sixty miles from there. When you are well and strong you may go where you please, although I frankly own the situation is by no means an unpleasant one for me. I would be willing to stay here always––with you.”
“Sir!” cried Daisy, flushing as red as the climbing roses against the window, her blue eyes blazing up with sudden fire, “do you mean to insult me?”
“By no means,” responded Lester Stanwick, eagerly. “Indeed, I respect and honor you too much for that. Why, I risked my life to save yours, and shielded your honor with my name. Had I been your husband in very truth I could not have done more.”
Daisy covered her face with her hands.
“I thank you very much for saving me,” she sobbed, “but won’t you please go away now and leave me to myself?”
Roué and villain as Lester Stanwick was, he could not help feeling touched by the innocence and beauty of little Daisy, and from that instant he loved her with a wild, absorbing, passionate love, and he made a vow, then and there, that he would win her.
From their boyhood up Rex and Lester had been rivals. At college Rex had carried off the honors with flying colors. Pluma Hurlhurst, the wealthy heiress, had chosen Rex in preference to himself. He stood little chance with bright-eyed maidens compared with handsome, careless, winning Rex Lyon.
Quite unobserved, he had witnessed the meeting between Rex and Daisy at the fountain, and how tenderly he clasped her in his arms as they waltzed together in the mellow light, to the delicious strains of the “Blue Danube,” and knowing Rex as well as he did, he knew for the first time in life Rex’s heart was touched.
“It would be a glorious revenge,” Stanwick had muttered to himself, “if I could win her from him.” Then a sordid 58 motive of revenge alone prompted him––now he was beginning to experience the sweet thrillings of awakened love himself. Yes, he had learned to love Daisy for her own sweet self.