wered a sweet, bird-like voice, which
pierced poor Rex's heart to the very core as a girlish little figure
bounded through the open door-way, out into the brilliant sunshine.

"God pity me!" cried Rex, staggering forward. "It _is_ Daisy--my
wife!"

CHAPTER XIII.

Rex had hoped against hope.

"Daisy!" he cried, holding out his arms to her with a yearning,
passionate cry. "My God! tell me it is false--you are _not_ here with
Stanwick--or I shall go mad! Daisy, my dear little sweetheart, my
little love, why don't you speak?" he cried, clasping her close to his
heart and covering her face and hair and hands with passionate,
rapturous kisses.

Daisy struggled out of his embrace, with a low, broken sob, flinging
herself on her knees at his feet with a sharp cry.

"Daisy," said the old lady, bending over her and smoothing back the
golden hair from the lovely anguished face, "tell him the truth, dear.
You are here with Mr. Stanwick; is it not so?"

The sudden weight of sorrow that had fallen upon poor, hapless Daisy
seemed to paralyze her very senses. The sunshine seemed blotted out,
and the light of heaven to grow dark around her.

"Yes," she cried, despairingly; and it almost seemed to Daisy another
voice had spoken with her lips.

"This Mr. Stanwick claims to be your husband?" asked the old lady,
solemnly.

"Yes," she cried out again, in agony, "but, Rex, I--I--"

The words died away on her white lips, and the sound died away in her
throat. She saw him recoil from her with a look of white, frozen
horror on his face which gave place to stern, bitter wrath. Slowly and
sadly he put her clinging arms away from him, folding his arms across
his breast with that terrible look upon his face such as a hero's face
wears when he has heard, unflinchingly, his death sentence--the calm
of terrible despair.

"Daisy," he said, proudly, "I have trusted you blindly, for I loved
you madly, passionately. I would as soon believe the fair smiling
heavens that bend above us false as you whom I loved so madly and so
well. I was mad to bind you with such cruel, irksome bonds when your
heart was not mine but another's. My dream of love is shattered now.
You have broken my heart and ruined and blighted my life. God forgive
you, Daisy, for I never can! I give you back your freedom; I release
you from your vows; I can not curse you--I have loved you too well for
that; I cast you from my heart as I cast you from my life; farewell,