o the end."

A nameless dread was clutching at his heart-strings. What could she
mean? he asked himself, confusedly. What did this foul mystery mean?
He must know, or he would go mad!

"You may speak out unreservedly, Miss Pluma," he said, hoarsely. "I
give you my word, as a gentleman, I shall not interrupt you, even
though your words should cause me a bitter heart-pang."

He stood before her, his arms folded across his breast, yet no pang of
remorse crept into Pluma Hurlhurst's relentless heart for the cruel
blow she was about to deal him.

"I must begin at the time of the lawn fete," she said. "That morning
a woman begged to see me, sobbing so piteously I could not refuse
her an audience. No power of words could portray the sad story of
suffering and wrong she poured into my ears, of a niece--beautiful,
young, passionate, and willful--and of her prayers and useless
expostulations, and of a handsome, dissolute lover to whom the
girl was passionately attached, and of elopements she had frustrated,
alas! more than once. Ah! how shall I say it!--the lover was not a
marrying man."

Pluma stopped short, and hid her face again in her kerchief as if in
utter confusion.

"Go on--go on!" cried Rex, hoarsely.

"'Lend me money,' cried the woman, 'that I may protect the girl by
sending her off to school at once. Kind lady, she is young, like
you, and I beg you on my knees!' I gave the woman the required
amount, and the girl was taken to school the very next day. But the
end was not there. The lover followed the girl--there must have been
a preconcerted plan between them--and on the morning after she had
entered school she fled from it--fled with her lover. That lover
was Lester Stanwick--gay, fascinating, perfidious Lester--whom you
know but too well. Can you not guess who the girl was, Rex?"

The dark eyes regarding her were frozen with horror, his white lips
moved, but no sound issued from them. She leaned nearer to him, her
dark, perfumed hair swept across his face as she whispered, with
startling effect:

"The girl was Daisy Brooks, and she is at this moment in company with
her lover! Heaven pity you, Rex; you must learn to forget her."

CHAPTER XI.

When Daisy Brooks opened her eyes, she found herself lying on a white
bed, and in a strange apartment which she never remembered having seen
before. For one brief instant she quite imagined the terrible ordeal
through which she had passed was but a dream. Th