"I am stopping at a boarding-place some little distance from here. This is not Baltimore, but a little station some sixty miles from there. When you are well and strong you may go where you please, although I frankly own the situation is by no means an unpleasant one for me. I would be willing to stay here always--with you." "Sir!" cried Daisy, flushing as red as the climbing roses against the window, her blue eyes blazing up with sudden fire, "do you mean to insult me?" "By no means," responded Lester Stanwick, eagerly. "Indeed, I respect and honor you too much for that. Why, I risked my life to save yours, and shielded your honor with my name. Had I been your husband in very truth I could not have done more." Daisy covered her face with her hands. "I thank you very much for saving me," she sobbed, "but won't you please go away now and leave me to myself?" _Roué_ and villain as Lester Stanwick was, he could not help feeling touched by the innocence and beauty of little Daisy, and from that instant he loved her with a wild, absorbing, passionate love, and he made a vow, then and there, that he would win her. From their boyhood up Rex and Lester had been rivals. At college Rex had carried off the honors with flying colors. Pluma Hurlhurst, the wealthy heiress, had chosen Rex in preference to himself. He stood little chance with bright-eyed maidens compared with handsome, careless, winning Rex Lyon. Quite unobserved, he had witnessed the meeting between Rex and Daisy at the fountain, and how tenderly he clasped her in his arms as they waltzed together in the mellow light, to the delicious strains of the "Blue Danube," and knowing Rex as well as he did, he knew for the first time in life Rex's heart was touched. "It would be a glorious revenge," Stanwick had muttered to himself, "if I could win her from him." Then a sordid motive of revenge alone prompted him--now he was beginning to experience the sweet thrillings of awakened love himself. Yes, he had learned to love Daisy for her own sweet self. He smiled as he thought of the last words Pluma Hurlhurst had said to him: "Revenge is sweet, Lester, when love is turned to bitter hatred. Help me to drag Rex Lyon's pride as low as he has this night dragged mine, and you shall have my hand as your reward. My father is an invalid--he can not live much longer--then you will be master of Whitestone Hall." As he had walked down the broad gravel path, running his eye over the vast plantation stretching afar on all sides, like a field of snow, as the moonlight fell upon the waving cotton, he owned to himself it was a fair domain well worth the winning. But as he stood there, gazing silently down upon little Daisy's face--how strange it was--he would have given up twenty such inheritances for the hope of making sweet little Daisy Brooks his wife.