idea that her supposed death would leave
Rex free to marry Pluma. That wrong could come of it, in any way, she
never once dreamed.

The terrible awakening truth had flashed upon her suddenly; she might
hide herself forever from her husband, but it would not lessen the
fact; she, and she only, was his lawful wife before God and man. From
Heaven nothing could be hidden.

Her whole heart seemed to go out to her young husband and cling to him
as it had never done before.

"What a fatal love mine was!" she said to herself; "how fatal, how
cruel to me!"

To-morrow night! Oh, Heaven! would she be in time to save him? The
very thought seemed to arouse all her energy.

"Why, what are you going to do, my dear?" cried Mrs. Tudor, in
consternation, as Daisy staggered, weak and trembling, from her
couch.

"I am going away," she cried. "I have been guilty of a great wrong. I
can not tell you all that I have done, but I must atone for it if it
is in my power while yet there is time. Pity me, but do not censure
me;" and sobbing as if her heart would break, she knelt at the feet of
the kind friend Heaven had given her and told her all.

Mrs. Tudor listened in painful interest and amazement. It was a
strange story this young girl told her; it seemed more like a romance
than a page from life's history.

"You say you must prevent this marriage at Whitestone Hall." She took
Daisy's clasped hands from her weeping face, and holding them in her
own looked into it silently, keenly, steadily. "How could you do it?
What is Rexford Lyon to you?"

Lower and lower drooped the golden bowed head, and a voice like no
other voice, like nothing human, said:

"I am Rex Lyon's wife, his wretched, unhappy, abandoned wife."

Mrs. Tudor dropped her hands with a low cry of dismay.

"You will keep my secret," sobbed Daisy; and in her great sorrow she
did not notice the lady did not promise.

In vain Mrs. Tudor pleaded with her to go back to her husband and beg
him to hear her.

"No," said Daisy, brokenly. "He said I had spoiled his life, and he
would never forgive me. I have never taken his name, and I never
shall. I will be Daisy Brooks until I die."

"Daisy Brooks!" The name seemed familiar to Mrs. Tudor, yet she could
not tell where she had heard it before.

Persuasion was useless. "Perhaps Heaven knows best," sighed Mrs.
Tudor, and with tears in her eyes (for she had really loved the
beautiful young stranger, thrown for so many long we