He stooped down to look into the girl’s white face, his own just as pallid and startled, crying, with passionate incredulity:
“Is it true, Daisie Bell? Are you indeed so false and wicked?”
“Dallas! Oh, my love!” she sobbed, in strange affright, covering her face with her lily hands as if in shame.
“Is it true? Are you engaged to him—to us both?” he thundered wrathfully.
“Oh, Dallas, yes; but—but—hear me!” she wailed imploringly; but he threw off her hand as if it were a serpent, and rushed from the house.
CHAPTER V.
A CRUEL COQUETTE.
A cry of the bitterest grief and yearning burst from Daisie’s lips as Dallas angrily shook off her hold and rushed from the house.
“Oh, Dallas, my love, my darling, come back—come back, and I will explain everything!”
She would have followed him, but as she sprang erect a terrible twinge of pain in her sprained ankle made her fall back on the sofa, sobbing with pain; and meanwhile Dallas Bain had rushed from the place in a dazed condition of mind, in which surprise, anger, and wounded love all blended in confusion.
The feelings of the gay little widow, Mrs. Fleming, may better be imagined than described in finding out that the man she adored was madly in love with another.