back to that
sweet love-dream so cruelly broken. A mist as of tears spread before
his eyes, and shut the whole world from him as he glanced out of the
window and up at the star-gemmed sky--that was his Daisy's home.

"I hope my little song has not cast a gloom over you, Rex?" she said,
holding out her hands to him as she arose to bid him good-night--those
small white hands upon one of which his engagement-ring glowed with a
thousand prismatic hues.

"Why should it?" he asked, attempting to laugh lightly. "I admired it
perhaps more than any other I have ever heard you sing."

Pluma well knew why.

"It was suggested to me by a strange occurrence. Shall I relate it to
you, Rex?"

He made some indistinct answer, little dreaming of how wofully the
little anecdote would affect him.

"I do not like to bring up old, unpleasant subjects, Rex. But do you
remember what the only quarrel we ever had was about, or rather _who_
it was about?"

He looked at her in surprise; he had not the least idea of what she
alluded to.

"Do you remember what a romantic interest you once took in our
overseer's niece--the one who eloped with Lester Stanwick from
boarding-school--the one whose death we afterward read of? Her name
was Daisy--Daisy Brooks."

If she had suddenly plunged a dagger into his heart with her white
jeweled hands he could not have been more cruelly startled. He could
have cried aloud with the sharp pain of unutterable anguish that
memory brought him. His answer was a bow; he dared not look up lest
the haggard pain of his face should betray him.

"Her uncle (he was no relation, I believe, but she called him that)
was more fond of her than words can express. I was driving along by an
unfrequented road to-day when I came across a strange, pathetic sight.
The poor old man was putting the last touches to a plain wooden cross
he had just erected under a magnolia-tree, which bore the simple
words: 'To the memory of Daisy Brooks, aged sixteen years.' Around the
cross the grass was thickly sown with daisies.

"'She does not rest here,' the old man said, drawing his rough sleeve
across his tear-dimmed eyes; 'but the poor little girl loved this spot
best of any.'"

Pluma wondered why Rex took her just then in his arms for the first
time and kissed her. He was thanking her in his heart; he could have
knelt to her for the kind way she had spoken of Daisy.

A little later he was standing by the open window of his own room i