"If it were only you who was to occupy it," Frances said to her one morning when they had been reading together for an hour or more in the room they both thought so pleasant. "I like Daisy, but somehow she seems so far from me. Why, there's not a sentiment in common between us."
Then, as if sorry for having said so much, she spoke of Daisy's marvelous beauty and winning ways, and hoped Julia would know and love her ere long, and possibly do her good.
It so happened that Guy was sometimes present at these readings, enjoying them so much that there insensibly crept into his heart a wish that Daisy was more like the Boston girl whom he had mentally termed strong-minded.
"And in time, perhaps, she may be," he thought. "I mean to have Julia here a great deal next summer, and with two such women for companions as Julia and Fan, Daisy cannot help but improve."
And so at last, when the house was settled and the early spring flowers were in bloom, Guy started westward for his wife. He had not seen her now for months, and it was more than two weeks since he had heard from her, and his heart beat high with joyful anticipation as he thought just how she would look when she came to him, shyly and coyly, as she always did, with that droop in her eyelids and that pink flush in her cheeks. He would chide her a little at first, he said, for having been so poor a correspondent, especially of late, and after that he would love her so much, and shield her so tenderly from every want or care, that she should never feel the difference in his fortune.
Poor Guy—he little dreamed what was in store for him just inside the door where he stood ringing one morning early in May, and which, when at last it was opened, shut in a very different man from the one who went through it three hours later, benumbed and half-crazed with bewilderment and surprise.
CHAPTER V
THE DIVORCE
He had expected to meet Daisy in the hall, but she was nowhere in sight, and she who appeared in response to the card he sent up seemed confused and unnatural to such a degree that Guy asked in some alarm if anything had happened, and where Daisy was.