Daisie fought with herself for power to seem glad and kind. As she read in his eyes the love that filled his heart she determined that she must try to forget and forgive the fraud by which he had won her, because of his great love. She would pray Heaven as she had never done before to let her forget a pair of haunting dark eyes, lips that were sweeter than honey, a voice like music, and to put in her tortured heart a wife’s love for her husband.
When she saw him looking at her so fondly, she blushed and murmured:
“Am I not hideous—all my curls gone?”
“They will grow again, just as beautiful as ever, and you could never be hideous to me, anyway.”
“Thank you. But I know I look wretched. My cheeks so thin, my eyes so big and hollow! But I have been very ill. It is a wonder I did not die.”
“I was afraid that you would, dear. I began to feel that fate was against me in everything, and that you would be taken from me in punishment for the fraud by which I won you. It was wicked, I know, but perhaps God will forgive and let me find happiness with you at last—because I love you so.”
It was pathetic, pitiful—this mad love that had broken the barriers of Right and Duty for its own sake. But would Heaven indeed forgive?
Royall Sherwood never considered any one but himself in the struggle for Daisie’s love—not even Daisie herself. Still less the man he had robbed of his love and cheated of his happiness. Would he indeed prosper at last on the wreck of another’s hopes?
He looked so yearningly at Daisie that she murmured:
“I—I have not told you yet how glad I am that you are well again.”