Daisy--farewell forever!"

She tried to speak, but her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth.
Oh, pitying Heaven, if she could only have cried out to you and the
angels to bear witness and proclaim her innocence! The strength to
move hand or foot seemed suddenly to have left her. She tried hard,
oh! so hard, to speak, but no sound issued from her white lips. She
felt as one in a horrible trance, fearfully, terribly conscious of all
that transpired around her, yet denied the power to move even a muscle
to defend herself.

"Have you anything to say to me, Daisy?" he asked, mournfully, turning
from her to depart.

The woful, terrified gaze of the blue eyes deepened pitifully, but she
spoke no word, and Rex turned from her--turned from the girl-bride
whom he loved so madly, with a bursting, broken heart, more bitter to
bear than death itself--left her alone with the pitying sunlight
falling upon her golden hair, and her white face turned up to heaven,
silently praying to God that she might die then and there.

Oh, Father above, pity her! She had no mother's gentle voice to guide
her, no father's strong breast to weep upon, no sister's soothing
presence. She was so young and so pitifully lonely, and Rex had
drifted out of her life forever, believing her--oh, bitterest of
thoughts!--believing her false and sinful.

Poor little Daisy was ignorant of the ways of the world; but a dim
realization of the full import of the terrible accusation brought
against her forced its way to her troubled brain.

She only realized--Rex--her darling Rex, had gone out of her life
forever.

Daisy flung herself face downward in the long, cool, waving green
grass where Rex had left her.

"Daisy," called Miss Burton, softly, "it is all over; come into the
house, my dear."

But she turned from her with a shuddering gasp.

"In the name of pity, leave me to myself," she sobbed; "it is the
greatest kindness you can do me."

And the poor old lady who had wrought so much sorrow unwittingly in
those two severed lives, walked slowly back to the cottage, with tears
in her eyes, strongly impressed there must be some dark mystery in the
young girl's life who was sobbing her heart out in the green grass
yonder; and she did just what almost any other person would have done
under the same circumstances--sent immediately for Lester Stanwick.
He answered the summons at once, listening with intense interest while
the aged spinster briefly related