CHAPTER XXXII.
THE SPIDER’S WEB.
Mrs. Fleming was not looking straight at Annette when she asked her question, or she would have seen a deep crimson mount to the young girl’s brow as she answered evasively:
“I do not remember any young man at Gull Beach who wore glasses.”
“Perhaps it was only my fancy that I had seen him before,” Mrs. Fleming answered carelessly, dismissing the subject—in which, indeed, she took but little interest, her anxious fears being centered on the alarming rencounter of Daisie with the Cullens.
She was terrified at the thought of her finding out at this late day the wicked part she had played in estranging her from Dallas Bain.
And yet she knew that it was possible, and even highly probable, that Daisie might become acquainted with her treachery at no distant day.
It had taken a large bribe—no less a price than enough money to marry on and set up housekeeping in New York—to induce Cullen and Letty to carry out the hasty plot she had formed on the night when Royall’s accident had made it possible to summon Daisie to his side and keep her there. Mrs. Fleming had paid the pair a thousand dollars; but she did not regret it, seeing that such success had crowned her efforts.
She had succeeded in parting Daisie and Dallas—a glorious triumph for a woman who loved the latter as madly as she did, and she did not despair of meeting him at some future time and winning him yet.
In the meantime, it was part of her policy to make friends with Daisie, and, after overcoming the girl’s first natural resentment over the part she had played in marrying her to Royall, she found it easy to do. Poor Daisie was so sad and lonely with her wounded heart, in the midst of her new splendor of wealth and place, that she could not repulse any offered kindness.
So an intimacy, if not a real friendship, grew up between the pair, and she was loath to have it broken off now by the risk that confronted her in the attitude of her whilom maid and her rapacious husband.