“Yes, it was my fault. I knew Royall and Daisie were engaged, and thought it would be great fun to marry them offhand, believing they would be pleased to have it so. But Daisie’s dignity is offended, I’m sorry to see. Royall, I know you can soon bring her around to forgive me!” chirped the widow, suddenly making herself mistress of the situation. But Daisie’s eyes blazed with anger as she turned and placed her hand on the arm of Dallas Bain. “Mr. Bain, will you please take me home to Aunt Alice?” she exclaimed; then bitterly: “I will never forgive you, Mrs. Fleming, for this outrage, and to-morrow I will call in the law to free me from your cousin’s fetters.” With those words, she swept from the room with Dallas, and no one was bold enough to try to arrest her exit. CHAPTER XVI. FAITHFUL. Mrs. Fleming, pale with secret wrath and chagrin, sent a venomous look after the retreating forms of Dallas and Daisie, then set herself the task of making everything right with her guests. “It was all my fault. I am too fond of a joke,” she said plaintively. “But, as they were already engaged, I thought they would be rather pleased than otherwise. But Daisie chose to be offish about it, and I’m sorry now that I did it, of course.” “Oh, I shall persuade her to forgive you to-morrow,” Royall said, with pretended carelessness; adding: “Good friends, do not let this awkward little _contretemps_ spoil your pleasure.” No one hinted, no one guessed, that the bride’s heart belonged to another man. No one took the affair _au serieux_, thinking it would all come right to-morrow when Daisie had had her little pouting spell. So the gayeties of the evening went on, and Dallas and Daisie, both so sorely stricken down from joy to woe, wended their way to her little cottage home, sad at heart and indignant over the cheat that had been practiced on her confidence, yet both believing that the unwelcome fetters might soon be broken. Both felt quite certain that Royall Sherwood had been in the plot to deceive her, and Daisie’s pity for him had changed to hate and indignation. “I would die now before I would become his wife in reality!” she vowed, in passionate resentment; and Dallas pressed her little hand tenderly, feeling that the joy of his life would be blotted out were he to lose his darling. But he did not mean to lose her--not he; and he resolved to visit a noted lawyer to-morrow, and place the case in his hands, so that Daisie might be freed as soon as possible. “Then, darling one, our wedding shall follow soon, and in our happiness we will soon forget this brief shadow,” he said fondly, as he stood on the steps looking up at her just as he had seen her first beneath the drooping wistarias--the picture that stayed in his heart till he died. Suddenly Aunt Alice came to the door in her surliest mood. “What has brought you home to-night, Daisie? I thought you meant to stay several days?” she exclaimed, glowering at the girl’s companion.