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 had, 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 would 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, _ce matin_," 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 reverie; "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 guess. 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, mon Dieu! vous êtes malade! J'apporterai un verre d'eau!" Pauline
exclaimed, forgetting her English and adopting her mother tongue in her
alarm 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 it 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.