I will be so good and loving and make you so happy--and
your sister, too--I was a bother to her once. I'll be a comfort now.
Tell her so, please; tell her to bid me come. Say the word yourself,
and, almost before you know it, I'll be there.

"Truly, lovingly, waitingly, your wife,
DAISY.

"P.S.--To make sure of this letter's safety I shall send it to New York
by a friend, who will mail it to you.

"Again, lovingly.
DAISY THORNTON."

This was Daisy's letter which Guy read with such a pang in his heart as
he had never known before, even when he was smarting the worst from
wounded love and disappointed hopes. Then he had said to himself, "I can
never suffer again as I am suffering now," and now, alas, he felt how
little he knew of that pain which rends the heart and takes the breath
away.

"God help her!" he moaned, his first thought, his first prayer, for
Daisy, the girl who called herself his wife, when just across the hall,
only a few rods away, was the bride of a few hours--another woman who
bore his name and called him her husband.

With a face as pale as ashes and hands which shook like palsied hands,
he read again that pathetic cry from her whom he now felt he had never
ceased to love; aye, whom he loved still, and whom, if he could, he
would have taken to his arms so gladly and loved and cherished as the
priceless thing he had once thought her to be. The first moments of
agony which followed the reading of the letter were Daisy's wholly, and
in bitterness of soul the man she had cast off and thought to take again
cried out, as he stretched his arms toward an invisible form: "Too late,
darling--too late. But had it come two months, one month, or even one
week ago, I would--would--have gone to you over land and sea, but
now--another is in your place, another is my wife; Julia--poor, innocent
Julia. God help me to keep my vow; God help me in my need!"

He was praying now; Julia was the burden of his prayer. And as he prayed
there came into his heart an unutterable tenderness and pity for her. He
had thought he loved her an hour ago! he believed he loved her now, or,
if he did not, he would be to her the kindest, most thoughtful of
husbands, and never let her know, by word or sign, of the terrible pain
he should always carry in his heart. "Darling Daisy; poor Julia!" was
what to himself he designated the two women who were both so much to
him. To the first his love, to the other his tender care, for she was