rove passed quickly. She was
beginning to feel quite at home with Mrs. Glenn and Eve, but Bessie
and Gertie held aloof from her. She was beginning to believe she never
would be able to win her way to their hearts. Eve--warm-hearted,
impulsive Eve--took to her at once.

"You are just the kind of a girl I like, Daisy," said Eve, twirling
one of her soft gold curls caressingly around her finger; "and if I
were a handsome young man, instead of a girl, I should fall
straightway in love with you. Why, what are you blushing so for?"
cried Eve. "Don't you like to talk about love and lovers?"

"No," said Daisy, in a low voice, a distressed look creeping into her
blue eyes. "If you please, Eve, I'd rather not talk about such
things."

"You are certainly a funny girl," said Eve, wonderingly. "Why, do you
know all the handsome young fellows around here have fallen deeply in
love with you, and have just been besieging both Bess and Gertie for
an introduction to you."

No laughing rejoinder came from Daisy's red lips. There was an anxious
look in her eyes. Ah! this, then, accounted for the growing coldness
with which the two sisters greeted her.

"You do not seem enough interested to even ask who they are," said
Eve, disappointedly. "I suppose you have never heard we have some
of the handsomest gentlemen around here to be met with in the
whole South--or in the North either, for that matter," said Eve,
enthusiastically. "Wait until you have seen some of them."

How little she knew the girl's heart and soul was bound up in Rex,
whom she told herself she was never again to see.

"Do you see that large gray, stone house yonder, whose turrets you
can just see beyond those trees?" asked Eve, suddenly, a mischievous
light dancing in her merry hazel eyes.

"Yes," replied Daisy. "I have a fine view of it from my window
upstairs. I have seen a little child swinging to and fro in a hammock
beneath the trees. Poor little thing, she uses a crutch. Is she
lame?"

"Yes," replied Eve, "that's little Birdie; she's lame. I do not want
to talk about her but about her brother. Oh, he is perfectly
splendid!" declared Eve, enthusiastically, "and rich, too. Why, he
owns I don't know how many cotton plantations and orange groves, and
he is--oh--so handsome! You must take care you do not fall in love
with him. All the girls do. If you did not, you would be a great
exception; you could scarcely help caring for him, he is so winning
and so nice,"