Part 5 (1/2)

He was very talkative that evening, and asked his wife many questions about her friends and the shopping she wished to do, and the places they were to visit; and Julia, who had hitherto regarded him as a quiet, silent man, given to few words, wondered at the change, and watched the bright red spots on his cheeks, and thought how she would manage to have medical advice for that dreadful heart-disease, which had come like a nightmare to haunt her bridal days.

Next morning there came a Boston paper containing a notice of the marriage, and this Guy sent to Daisy, with only the faint tracing of a pencil to indicate the paragraph.

”Better so than to write,” he thought; though he longed to add the words, ”Forgive me, Daisy; your letter came too late.”

And so the paper was sent, and, after a week or two, Guy went back to his home in Cuylerville, and the blue rooms which Julia had fitted up for Daisy five years before became her own by right. And f.a.n.n.y Thornton welcomed her warmly to the house, and by many little acts of thoughtfulness showed how glad she was to have her there. And Julia was very happy save when she remembered the heart-disease which she was sure Guy had, and for which he would not take advice. ”There was nothing the matter with his heart, unless it were too full of love,” he told her laughingly, and wondered to himself if in saying this he was guilty of a lie, inasmuch as his words misled her so completely.

After a time, however, there came a change, and thoughts of Daisy ceased to disturb him as they once had done. No one ever mentioned her to him, and since the receipt of her letter he had heard no tidings of her until six months after his marriage, when there came to him the ten thousand dollars, with all the interest which had accrued since the settlement first was made. There was no word from Daisy herself, but a letter from a lawyer in Berlin, who said all there was to say with regard to the business, but did not tell where Miss McDonald, as he called her, was.

Then Guy wrote Daisy a letter of thanks, to which there came no reply, and as time went on the old wound began to heal, the grave to close again; and when, at last, one year after his marriage, they brought him a beautiful little baby girl and laid it in his arms, and then a few moments later let him into the room where the pale mother lay, he stooped over her, and kissing her fondly, said;

”I never loved you half as well as I do now!”

It was a pretty child, with dark blue eyes, and hair in which there was a gleam of gold, and Guy, when asked by his wife what he would call her, said;

”Would you object to Margaret?”

Julia knew what he meant, and like the true, n.o.ble woman she was, offered no objection to Guy's choice, and herself first gave the pet name of Daisy to her child, on whom Guy settled the ten thousand dollars sent to him by the Daisy over the sea.

CHAPTER IX.-DAISY, TOM, AND THAT OTHER ONE.

Watching, waiting, hoping, saying to herself in the morning, ”It will come before night,” and saying to herself at night, ”It will be here to-morrow morning.” Such was Daisy's life, even before she had a right to expect an answer to her letter.

Of the nature of Guy's reply she had no doubt. He had loved her once, he loved her still, and he would take her back of course. There was no truth in that rumor of another marriage. Possibly her father, whom she understood now better than she once did, had gotten the story up for the sake of inducing her through pique to marry Tom; but if so, his plan would fail. Guy would write to her, ”Come!” and she should go, and more than once she counted the contents of her purse and added to it the sum due her from Madame Lafarcade, and wondered if she would dare venture on the journey with so small a sum.

”You so happy and white, too, this morning,” her little pupil, Pauline, said to her one day, when they sat together in the garden, and Daisy was indulging in a fanciful picture of her meeting with Guy.

”Yes, I am happy,” Daisy said, rousing from her revery; ”but I did not know I was pale, or white, as you term it, though, now I think of it, I do feel sick and faint. It's the heat, I suppose. Oh! there is Max, with the mail! He is coming this way! He has,-he certainly has something for me!”

Daisy's cheeks were scarlet now, and her eyes were bright as stars as she went forward to meet the man who brought the letters to the house.

”Only a paper!-is there nothing more?” she asked, in an unsteady voice, as she took the paper in her hand, and recognizing Guy's handwriting, knew almost to a certainty what was before her.

”Oh, you are sick, I must bring some water,” Pauline exclaimed, alarmed at Daisy's white face and the peculiar tone of her voice.

”No, Pauline, stay; open the paper for me,” Daisy said, feeling that it would be easier so than to read it herself, for she knew what was there, else he would never have sent her a paper and nothing more.

Delighted to be of some use, and a little gratified to open a foreign paper, Pauline tore off the wrapper, starting a little at Daisy's quick, sharp cry as she made a rent across the handwriting.

”Look, you are tearing into my name, which he wrote,” Daisy said, and then remembering herself she sank back into her seat in the garden chair, while Pauline wondered what harm there was in tearing an old soiled wrapper, and why her governess should take it so carefully in her hand and roll it up as if it had been a living thing.

There were notices of new books, and a runaway match in high life, and a suicide on Sumner street, and a golden wedding in Roxbury, and the latest fas.h.i.+ons from Paris, into which Pauline plunged with avidity, while Daisy listened like one in a dream, asking, when the fas.h.i.+ons were exhausted, ”Is that all? Are there no deaths or marriages?”

Pauline had not thought of that,-she would see; and she hunted through the columns till she found Guy's pencil mark, and read:

”Married, this morning, in--church, by the Rev. Dr.--, a.s.sisted by the rector, Guy Thornton, Esq., of Cuylerville, to Miss Julia Hamilton, of this city.”

”Yes, yes, I see,-I know, it's very hot here, isn't it? I think I will go in,” Daisy said, her fingers working nervously with the bit of paper she held.