Daisy Brooks: or, A Perilous Love

Poor Daisy was quite crestfallen; great tear-drops trembled on her long lashes. How could she answer? She had fallen asleep, wooed by the lulling breeze and the sunshine.

“The basket was so heavy,” she answered, timidly, “and I–I–sat down to rest a few moments, and–”

“Further explanation is quite unnecessary,” retorted Pluma, sharply, gathering up the reins. “See that you have those things at the Hall within ten minutes; not an instant later.”

Touching the prancing ponies with her ivory-handled whip, the haughty young heiress whirled leisurely down the road, leaving Daisy, with flushed face and tear-dimmed eyes, gazing after her.

“Oh, dear, I wish I had never been born,” she sobbed, flinging herself down on her knees, and burying her face in the long, cool grass. “No one ever speaks a kind word to me but poor old Uncle John, and even he dare not be kind when Aunt Septima is near. She might have taken this heavy basket in her carriage,” sighed Daisy, bravely lifting the heavy burden in her delicate arms.

“That is just what I think,” muttered Rex Lyon from his place of concealment, savagely biting his lip.

In another moment he was by her side.

“Pardon me,” he said, deferentially raising his cap from his glossy curls, “that basket is too heavy for your slender arms. Allow me to assist you.”

In a moment the young girl stood up, and made the prettiest and most graceful of courtesies as she raised to his a face he never forgot. Involuntarily he raised his cap again in homage to her youth, and her shy sweet beauty.

“No; I thank you, sir, I have not far to carry the basket,” she replied, in a voice sweet as the chiming of silver bells–a voice that thrilled him, he could not tell why.

A sudden desire possessed Rex to know who she was and from whence she came.

“Do you live at the Hall?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, “I am Daisy Brooks, the overseer’s niece.”

“Daisy Brooks,” said Rex, musingly. “What a pretty name! how well it suits you!”

He watched the crimson blushes that dyed her fair young face–she never once raised her dark-blue eyes to his. The more Rex looked at her the more he admired this coy, bewitching, pretty little maiden. She made a fair picture under the boughs of the magnolia-tree, thick with odorous pink-and-white tinted blossoms, the sunbeams falling on her golden hair.

The sunshine or the gentle southern wind brought Rex no warning he was forging the first links of a dreadful tragedy. He thought only of the shy blushing beauty and coy grace of the young girl–he never dreamed of the hour when he should look back to that moment, wondering at his own blind folly, with a curse on his lips.

Again from over the trees came the sound of the great bell from the Hall.

“It is eight o’clock,” cried Daisy, in alarm. “Miss Pluma will be so angry with me.”

“Angry!” said Rex; “angry with you! For what?”

“She is waiting for the mull dresses,” replied Daisy.

It was a strange idea to him that any one should dare be angry with this pretty gentle Daisy.

“You will at least permit me to carry your basket as far as the gate,” he said, shouldering her burden without waiting for a reply. Daisy had no choice but to follow him. “There,” said Rex, setting the basket down by the plantation gate, which they had reached all too soon, “you must go, I suppose. It seems hard to leave the bright sunshine to go indoors.”

“I–I shall soon return,” said Daisy, with innocent frankness.

“Shall you?” cried Rex. “Will you return home by the same path?”

“Yes,” she replied, “if Miss Pluma does not need me.”

“Good-bye, Daisy,” he said. “I shall see you again.”

He held out his hand and her little fingers trembled and fluttered in his clasp. Daisy looked so happy yet so frightened, so charming yet so shy, Rex hardly knew how to define the feeling that stirred in his heart.

He watched the graceful, fairy figure as Daisy tripped away–instead of thinking he had done a very foolish thing that bright morning. Rex lighted a cigar and fell to dreaming of sweet little Daisy Brooks, and wondering how he should pass the time until he should see her again.

While Daisy almost flew up the broad gravel path to the house, the heavy burden she bore seemed light as a feather–no thought that she had been imprudent ever entered her mind.

There was no one to warn her of the peril which lay in the witching depths of the handsome stranger’s glances.

All her young life she had dreamed of the hero who would one day come to her, just such a dream as all youthful maidens experience–an idol they enshrine in their innermost heart, and worship in secret, never dreaming of a cold, dark time when the idol may lie shattered in ruins at their feet. How little knew gentle Daisy Brooks of the fatal love which would drag her down to her doom!

CHAPTER III

In an elegant boudoir, all crimson and gold, some hours later, sat Pluma Hurlhurst, reclining negligently on a satin divan, toying idly with a volume which lay in her lap. She tossed the book aside with a yawn, turning her superb dark eyes on the little figure bending over the rich trailing silks which were to adorn her own fair beauty on the coming evening.

“So you think you would like to attend the lawn fête to-night, Daisy?” she asked, patronizingly.

Daisy glanced up with a startled blush,

“Oh, I should like it so much, Miss Pluma,” she answered, hesitatingly, “if I only could!”

“I think I shall gratify you,” said Pluma, carelessly. “You have made yourself very valuable to me. I like the artistic manner you have twined these roses in my hair; the effect is quite picturesque.” She glanced satisfiedly at her own magnificent reflection in the cheval-glass opposite. Titian alone could have reproduced those rich, marvelous colors–that perfect, queenly beauty. He would have painted the picture, and the world would have raved about its beauty. The dark masses of raven-black hair; the proud, haughty face, with its warm southern tints; the dusky eyes, lighted with fire and passion, and the red, curved lips. “I wish particularly to look my very best to-night, Daisy,” she said; “that is why I wish you to remain. You can arrange those sprays of white heath in my hair superbly. Then you shall attend the fête, Daisy. Remember, you are not expected to take part in it; you must sit in some secluded nook where you will be quite unobserved.”

Pluma could not help but smile at the ardent delight depicted in Daisy’s face.

“I am afraid I can not stay,” she said, doubtfully, glancing down in dismay at the pink-and-white muslin she wore. “Every one would be sure to laugh at me who saw me. Then I would wish I had not stayed.”

“Suppose I should give you one to wear–that white mull, for instance–how would you like it? None of the guests would see you,” replied Pluma.

There was a wistful look in Daisy’s eyes, as though she would fain believe what she heard was really true.

“Would you really?” asked Daisy, wonderingly. “You, whom people call so haughty and so proud–you would really let me wear one of your dresses? I do not know how to tell you how much I am pleased!” she said, eagerly.

Pluma Hurlhurst laughed. Such rapture was new to her.

The night which drew its mantle over the smiling earth was a perfect one. Myriads of stars shone like jewels in the blue sky, and not a cloud obscured the face of the clear full moon. Hurlhurst Plantation was ablaze with colored lamps that threw out soft rainbow tints in all directions as far as the eye could reach. The interior of Whitestone Hall was simply dazzling in its rich rose bloom, its lights, its fountains, and rippling music from adjoining ferneries.

In an elegant apartment of the Hall Basil Hurlhurst, the recluse invalid, lay upon his couch, trying to shut out the mirth and gayety that floated up to him from below. As the sound of Pluma’s voice sounded upon his ear he turned his face to the wall with a bitter groan. “She is so like–” he muttered, grimly. “Ah! the pleasant voices of our youth turn into lashes which scourge us in our old age. ‘Like mother, like child.’”

The lawn fête was a grand success; the élite of the whole country round were gathered together to welcome the beautiful, peerless hostess of Whitestone Hall. Pluma moved among her guests like a queen, yet in all that vast throng her eyes eagerly sought one face. “Where was Rex?” was the question which constantly perplexed her. After the first waltz he had suddenly disappeared. Only the evening before handsome Rex Lyon had held her jeweled hand long at parting, whispering, in his graceful, charming way, he had something to tell her on the morrow. “Why did he hold himself so strangely aloof?” Pluma asked herself, in bitter wonder. Ah! had she but known!

While Pluma, the wealthy heiress, awaited his coming so eagerly, Rex Lyon was standing, quite lost in thought, beside a rippling fountain in one of the most remote parts of the lawn, thinking of Daisy Brooks. He had seen a fair face–that was all–a face that embodied his dream of loveliness, and without thinking of it found his fate, and the whole world seemed changed for him.

Handsome, impulsive Rex Lyon, owner of several of the most extensive and lucrative orange groves in Florida, would have bartered every dollar of his worldly possessions for love.

He had hitherto treated all notion of love in a very off-hand, cavalier fashion.

“Love is fate,” he had always said. He knew Pluma loved him. Last night he had said to himself: The time had come when he might as well marry; it might as well be Pluma as any one else, seeing she cared so much for him. Now all that was changed. “I sincerely hope she will not attach undue significance to the words I spoke last evening,” he mused.