And he managed to kill time and enjoy himself in many ways, despite his solicitude over Daisie. He boated, drove, and walked with some congenial friends he made at the hotel, and his strength and his good looks returned fast. The days flew fast and pleasantly. When the week was up, the grim nurse herself came to meet him when he called to inquire for Daisie. “She is improving every day, but very slowly, and I have let her sit up in an easy-chair to-day for the first time,” she said. “Does she know I am here?” he asked hopefully, eagerly. “I broke it to her gently this morning, but still the shock was great. Perhaps it was from joy at hearing you were well again,” said the nurse, who could not understand a fact that she easily perceived--that the invalid seemed to have a secret shrinking from him. As she knew none of the circumstances of the strange marriage, she felt convinced that the young wife must have had a quarrel with her husband before she came to visit her aunt. How could she gauge the strange despair of Daisie when she learned that her duty would be harder than ever now? That instead of playing the rôle of friend and sister, as heretofore, she must assume the real status of a wife? No wonder that she fainted, and that the nurse was sadly frightened ere she restored her to consciousness. She felt sorry for the anxious young husband, and said gently: “My dear young lady, if you could bear to see him a little while it would make him very happy.” Daisie was silent a moment, then she said gently and hopelessly, it seemed to the attentive nurse: “Of course I will see my husband. It is his right and my duty--I mean, my pleasure.” So the woman let her sit up after a while, and made her as pretty as she could--poor, pallid, wasted Daisie, with her shorn head, where the golden locks were just peeping out again, covered with a soft lace scarf; and so she awaited his coming. She had been so sorry for his affliction that she was unselfishly glad of his restoration to health, and the tears came to her eyes when he entered, stepping with the free grace of old. “Daisie!” “Royall!” She held her face up bravely for the kiss she knew he wanted, and the nurse, just leaving the room, thought it was a reconciliation. “All will go well now,” she said. Daisie fought with herself for power to seem glad and kind. As she read in his eyes the love that filled his heart she determined that she must try to forget and forgive the fraud by which he had won her, because of his great love. She would pray Heaven as she had never done before to let her forget a pair of haunting dark eyes, lips that were sweeter than honey, a voice like music, and to put in her tortured heart a wife’s love for her husband. When she saw him looking at her so fondly, she blushed and murmured: “Am I not hideous--all my curls gone?” “They will grow again, just as beautiful as ever, and you could never be hideous to me, anyway.”