Daisy flushed as rosy as the crimson geraniums near them, remembering Rex, her own handsome Rex, had said the same thing that morning he had carried her heavy basket to the gates of Whitestone Hall--that morning when all the world seemed to change as she glanced up into his merry brown eyes. "We are to be room-mates," explained Sara, "and I know I shall like you ever so much. Do you think you will like me?" "Yes," said Daisy. "I like you now." "Thank you," said Miss Sara, making a mock courtesy. "I am going to love you with all my might, and if you don't love me you will be the most ungrateful creature in the world. I know just how lonesome you must be," continued Sara. "I remember just how lonesome I was the first day I was away from mamma, and when night set in and I was all alone, and I knew I was securely locked in, I was actually thinking of tearing the sheets of my bed into strips and making a rope of them, and letting myself down to the ground through the window, and making for home as fast as I could. I knew I would be brought back the next day, though," laughed Sara. "Mamma is so strict with me. I suppose yours is too?" "I have no mother--or father," answered Daisy. "All my life I have lived with John Brooks and his sister Septima, on the Hurlhurst Plantation. I call them aunt and uncle. Septima has often told me no relationship at all existed between us." "You are an orphan, then?" suggested the sympathetic Sara. "Is there no one in all the world related to you?" "Yes--no--o," answered Daisy, confusedly, thinking of Rex, her young husband, and of the dearest relationship in all the world which existed between them. "What a pity," sighed Sara. "Well, Daisy," she cried, impulsively, throwing both her arms around her and giving her a hearty kiss, "you and I will be all the world to each other. I shall tell you all my secrets and you must tell me yours. There's some girls you can trust, and some you can't. If you tell them your secrets, the first time you have a spat your secret is a secret no longer. Every girl in the school knows all about it; of course you are sure to make up again. But," added Sara, with a wise expression, "after you are once deceived, you can never trust them again." "I have never known many girls," replied Daisy. "I do not know how others do, but I'm sure you can always trust my friendship." And the two girls sealed their compact with a kiss, just as the great bell in the belfry rang, warning them they must be at their lessons again--recess was over. CHAPTER VIII. In one of the private offices of Messrs. Tudor, Peck & Co., the shrewd Baltimore detectives, stood Rex, waiting patiently until the senior member of the firm should be at leisure. "Now, my dear sir, I will attend you with pleasure," said Mr. Tudor, sealing and dispatching the note he had just finished, and motioning Rex to a seat. "I shall be pleased if you will permit me to light a cigar," said Rex, taking the seat indicated.