CHAPTER XX.
HIS CONFESSION.
“May I speak to you alone a few minutes, Doctor Burns?” murmured Daisie, following the physician out from breakfast the next morning.
“Certainly, Mrs. Sherwood,” he returned deferentially; but she turned back from the threshold of the little morning room they were entering, with a passionate gesture and heart-wrung cry:
“Not that—oh, not that—Miss Bell is my name!”
“I beg your pardon.”
He bowed, and followed her across the threshold, closed the door, and placed a chair for her, sitting down opposite, and surveying her critically through his gold-bowed glasses, thinking, perhaps, that her wonderful beauty was all the more striking for the deadly pallor it wore.
“I think you married Mr. Sherwood last night?” he remarked.
The violet eyes flashed and darkened, and Daisie’s golden head crested itself with sudden anger.
“Perhaps you are aware of the circumstances of that marriage?” she asked, with icy hauteur.
“Yes; an ill-timed joke on the part of our hostess; but, unfortunately, binding until the law is invoked to release you. So you are really Mrs. Sherwood.”