Hagar had caught the low-spoken words, and in a voice that sounded strange and weird like a warning, she answered: "Yes, and unhappy is the bride upon whose home-coming rain-drops fall." How little they knew, as they stood there, of the terrible tragedy--the cruelest ever enacted--those grim, silent walls of Whitestone Hall were soon to witness, in fulfillment of the strange prophecy. Hagar, the maid, had scarcely ceased speaking ere the door was flung violently open, and a child of some five summers rushed into the room, her face livid with passion, and her dark, gleaming eyes shining like baneful stars, before which the two women involuntarily quailed. "What is this I hear?" she cried, with wild energy, glancing fiercely from the one to the other. "Is it true what they tell me--my father is bringing home his bride?" "Pluma, my child," remonstrated Mrs. Corliss, feebly, "I--" "Don't Pluma me!" retorted the child, clutching the deep crimson passion-roses from a vase at her side, and trampling them ruthlessly beneath her feet. "Answer me at once, I say--has he _dared_ do it?" "P-l-u-m-a!" Mrs. Corliss advances toward her, but the child turns her darkly beautiful, willful face toward her with an imperious gesture. "Do not come a step nearer," cried the child, bitterly, "or I shall fling myself from the window down on to the rocks below. I shall never welcome my father's wife here; and mark me, both of you, I hate her!" she cried, vehemently. "She shall rue the day that she was born!" Mrs. Corliss knew but too well the child would keep her word. No power, save God, could stay the turbulent current of the ungovernable self-will which would drag her on to her doom. No human being could hold in subjection the fierce, untamed will of the beautiful, youthful tyrant. There had been strange rumors of the unhappiness of Basil Hurlhurst's former marriage. No one remembered having seen her but once, quite five years before. A beautiful woman with a little babe had suddenly appeared at Whitestone Hall, announcing herself as Basil Hurlhurst's wife. There had been a fierce, stormy interview, and on that very night Basil Hurlhurst took his wife and child abroad; those who had once seen the dark, glorious, scornful beauty of the woman's face never forgot it. Two years later the master had returned alone with the little child, heavily draped in widower's weeds. The master of Whitestone Hall was young; those who knew his story were not surprised that he should marry--he could not go through life alone; still they felt a nameless pity for the young wife who was to be brought to the home in which dwelt the child of his former wife. There would be bitter war to the end between them. No one could tell on which side the scales of mercy and justice would be balanced.