Grief, rage, and jealousy struggled in her mind, but she gave vent to neither, holding in her emotion firmly while she said, in a cold voice, to the sobbing girl:
“Miss Bell, this is the strangest scene I ever witnessed. I came here this morning to offer my good wishes on your engagement to Royall Sherwood, and find another man making love to you in his absence. Is this fair to my cousin?”
Daisie’s only answer was a heartbroken sob behind the lovely white hands that hid her face, and Mrs. Fleming continued reproachfully:
“I could not have believed that such an innocent face hid the heart of a cruel coquette, playing fast and loose with true men’s hearts.”
“Oh, don’t!” sobbed poor Daisie, flinching as from a blow, and lifting tearful eyes, like violets drowned in rain, to the angry face of her accuser.
“You deserve all I have said, and worse,” retorted the widow vindictively, longing to shake the girl because she had wiled away the heart of Dallas Bain.
With all her money and all her advantages, he had remained cold as ice to her blandishments; but she had seen for herself that he was devoted to Daisie Bell.
And she knew that his acquaintance with her dated only from yesterday, because only last night she had met Annette Janowitz at a dance, and the excitable little thing, not knowing the harm she was doing, had blurted out the story of Daisie’s accident and the apparent devotion of Dallas Bain.
“Oh, isn’t he grand and handsome! Just the match for lovely Daisie Bell! I declare, if I were not already engaged to the dearest and most jealous fellow in the world, I should have been trying to flirt with Dallas Bain!” added Annette, rearranging the bunch of red roses at her belt, and so failing to see the jealous wrath on the little widow’s pink-and-white face.
She was fairly wild with annoyance, but even then she did not comprehend the full extent of the mischief, for Royall Sherwood, on leaving for New York that day, had confided to her that he was engaged to Daisie Bell, but that she had not wished to make the engagement public yet a while, dreading village gossip and curiosity.