“Just a week to-day, madame,” she made answer.
“Why, you are a bride, then,” they all chorused. “Ah! that accounts for your husband’s great anxiety about you. We all agreed we had never seen a husband more devoted!”
Daisy hid her face in the pillow. She thought she would go mad upon being so cruelly misunderstood. Oh! if she had only dared throw herself into their arms and sob out her heartaches on their bosoms. Yes, she was a bride, but the most 60 pitifully homesick, weary, disheartened little girl-bride that ever the sun shone on in the wide, wild world.
They assisted Daisy to arise, brushing out her long, tangled, golden curls, declaring to one another the pretty little creature looked more like a merry, rosy-cheeked school-girl than a little bride-wife, in her pink-and-white dotted muslin, which they had in the meantime done up for her with their own hands.
They wondered, too, why she never asked for her husband, and she looked almost ready to faint when they spoke of him.
“There seems to be something of a mystery here,” remarked one of the sisters when the trio were alone. “If that child is a bride, she is certainly not a happy one. I do not like to judge a fellow-creature––Heaven forbid! but I am sorely afraid all is not right with her. Twice this afternoon, entering the room quietly, I have found her lying face downward on the sofa, crying as if her heart would break! I am sorely puzzled!”
And the flame of suspicion once lighted was not easily extinguished in the hearts of the curious spinsters.
“‘Won’t you tell me your sorrow, my dear?’ I said.
“‘No, no; I dare not!’ she replied.
“‘Will you not confide in me, Mrs. Stanwick?’ I asked.