While the girls laid their innocent plans for calling back Daisie’s lover, Mrs. Fleming rode back to Sea View with fury in her heart—the fury of “a woman scorned.”
Keen and bitter had been her humiliation when Daisie had said so innocently:
“He laughed at the idea of marrying you!”
Her last hope of winning him was gone now, and jealous anger entered her heart and drove out the sweet guest, Love.
She hated and envied Daisie Bell with a hatred beyond all telling.
“She took him away from me—came between us with her dazzling face—I might still have won him if they had not met. Very well, I will punish them both most bitterly,” she vowed. “As for marrying, they never shall, if a woman’s wit can prevent it.”
As soon as she entered the house, she ascertained that Dallas Bain had not yet returned.
Her young-lady guests were down at the beach, and she went to her room to rest and plot how to keep the lovers apart for the future.
“I dare say she wrote to him as soon as I came away, explaining everything, and begging him to come back to her,” she thought astutely. “I must make sure of getting that letter.”
And as the village was so small that the letter-carrier service was not yet established, she presently sent her maid, Letty, to the post office, saying: