She answered, with the calmness of a great despair:
“I must leave you, Royall, for a while—a little while—because I should go mad just now without a change of some sort. I shall go to-morrow down to Gull Beach for a few weeks with Aunt Alice. You must do without me while I wrestle in silence with a grief beyond all telling, and gain strength by prayer to take up my burden and face the world again.” A pause to gather courage, and she added: “Annette tells me she has a letter from home to-day. Her mother is sick, and begs her to return. She goes to-morrow, and I shall accompany her on her journey.”
It was true. Annette had seized on the first excuse that offered to leave New York. It seemed to her that she could not breathe the same air with Ray Dering—he had come, and she must go.
“Oh, Daisie, you will soon return?” he half sobbed, breaking down utterly.
She moved to his side, and asked earnestly:
“Tell me—if you could have known what she was doing that night, would you have joined in that infamous plot against my happiness?”
No matter what he would have done, he knew, at this moment that his only salvation lay in denying it now.
He answered quickly:
“No, never!”
“Then I will return,” she answered, from the depths of her true womanly pity, and swept from the room without another glance at the cruel woman who had wrought all her woe.