"I hope not," replied Miss Raynor. "I would hate to be a rival of Pluma Hurlhurst's. I have often thought, as I watched her with Rex, it must be terrible to worship one person so madly. I have often thought Pluma's a perilous love." "Do not speak so," cried Grace. "You horrify me. Whenever I see her face I am afraid those words will be ringing in my ears--a perilous love." Miss Raynor made some laughing rejoinder which Pluma, white and trembling behind the ivy vines, did not catch, and still discussing the affair, they moved on, leaving Pluma Hurlhurst standing alone, face to face with the truth, which she had hoped against hope was false. Rex, who was so soon to be her husband, was certainly not her lover. Her keen judgment had told her long ago all this had come about through his mother's influence. Every word those careless lips had uttered came back to her heart with a cruel stab. "Even my guests are noticing his coldness," she cried, with a hysterical little sob. "They are saying to each other, 'He does not love me'--I, who have counted my triumphs by the scores. I have revealed my love in every word, tone and glance, but I can not awaken one sentiment in his proud, cold heart." When she remembered the words, "He pressed them to his lips, murmuring passionate, loving words over them," she almost cried aloud in her fierce, angry passion. She knew, just as well as though she had witnessed him herself, that those wild flowers were daisies, and she knew, too, why he had kissed them so passionately. She saw the sun shining on the trees, the flower-beds were great squares and circles of color, the fountains sparkled in the sunlight, and restless butterflies flitted hither and thither. For Pluma Hurlhurst, after that hour, the sunshine never had the same light, the flowers the same color, her face the same smile, or her heart the same joyousness. Never did "good and evil" fight for a human heart as they struggled in that hour in the heart of the beautiful, willful heiress. All the fire, the passion, and recklessness of her nature were aroused. "I will make him love me or I will die!" she cried, vehemently. "The love I long for shall be mine. I swear it, cost what it may!" She was almost terribly beautiful to behold, as that war of passion raged within her. She saw a cloud of dust arising in the distance. She knew it was Rex returning, but no bright flush rose to her cheek as she remembered what Miss Raynor had said of the wild flowers he had so rapturously caressed--he had given a few rank wild flowers the depths of a passionate love which he had never shown to her, whom he had asked to be his wife.