"I wonder why, oh, I wonder why he has done it. Oh, if he would but tell me, it could not surely seem quite so unendurable."
And Daisy Trevannion pressed her aching head, and her poor swollen eyes on to her mother's loving bosom in a sort of wild despair.
"Mamma, mamma," she cried, "help me. I cannot be angry with him. I wish I could. He was so gentle, so sweet—and he is so heartbroken, I can see by his letter. Oh, mamma, what can it be?"
But to this, even the devoted mother, who would gladly have given her own life to save her child this misery, could find no answer.
This was what had happened.
They had been engaged about three months, the wedding day was approximately fixed, when one morning the blow fell.
A letter to Daisy's father, enclosing one to herself—a letter which made Mr. Trevannion draw his brows together in instinctive indignation, and then as the first impulse cooled a little, caused him to turn to his daughter with a movement of irritation, underneath which, hope had, nevertheless, found time to reassert itself.
"Daisy," he exclaimed sharply, "what is the meaning of all this nonsense? Have you been quarrelling with Lingard? You're a bit of a spoilt child I know, my dear, but I don't like playing with edged tools—a man like Arthur won't stand being trifled with. Do you hear, Daisy—eh, what?"
For the girl had scarcely caught the sense of his words, so absorbed was she in those of the short, all too short, but terrible letter she had just read—the letter addressed to herself, which began "Daisy, my Daisy, for the last time," and ended abruptly with the simple signature, "Arthur Lingard".
She gazed up at her father—her white face all drawn, and as it were, withered with that minute's agony—her eyes dulled and yet wild. Never was there such a metamorphosis from the happy, laughing girl who had hurried in with some pretty excuse for her unpunctuality.