“Curse the villain! I’d like to horsewhip him for you, and I hope Cullen will find him and do it on his own account!” he exclaimed angrily, adding: “But, my dear, you’ve had a lucky escape from his toils, and I wouldn’t wear the willow if I were you. You’ve made a grand match, if it was brought about by a joke, and Royall loves you madly. Take my advice, and stick to him. He may get well and catch your heart in the rebound yet, so you may save your pride from this downfall.” CHAPTER XXII. “THE DIE WAS CAST.” Poor Daisie Bell! Everything and everybody seemed to be against her, and the old doctor’s specious reasoning appealed to her pride, if not her heart. What was any proud, sensitive girl likely to do, confronted with such conditions--to wear the willow, on the one hand, for a fickle, faithless lover, or to “take the goods the gods provided”? Every one advised the latter, and Daisie’s pride was a powerful ally. In her secret despair, she longed for death; but it would not come at her call. She was young, beautiful, and possessed of superb health, besides an overweening pride that would not permit her to pine away and die for a faithless lover who had fled with so contemptible a rival. She looked piteously at the old doctor, exclaiming: “I would rather return to my teacher’s desk in New York, and to a life of poverty and toil, than remain here in luxury as the wife of a man I do not love.” “I believe you, my dear young lady; but you are hedged in by circumstances you cannot break through. The condition of the man you have married appeals to your pity, if not your heart.” “Yes,” she assented sadly; and he continued: “If you turned against him now you would, by the shock of your desertion, destroy his slight chance of life. Can you bear to do it?” “And if he lives,” she said, “I am bound for life to a man I cannot love.” He shrank before the despair in her eyes, not knowing how to urge her further, and for a moment there was a blank silence. The next moment something happened that turned the wavering scales in Royall Sherwood’s favor. The sick nurse came to the door, saying: “Mrs. Fleming wants you to come at once, Doctor Burns; Mr. Sherwood has a sinking spell.” “Tell her I am coming,” and he beckoned Daisie to follow. She shrank back, and he said, almost sternly: “It may mean death. Can you be so--heartless?” He could not bear to lose his patient. As for her--who pitied her? Who considered for a moment whether her life was to be wrecked or not, poor Daisie Bell? He was rich, and she was poor--that made all the difference in the world. They all thought she should be proud of her good luck. She was like a solitary leaf blown hither and thither by the winds of destiny, with no volition of her own. Why struggle against overwhelming fate? She looked appealingly into the old doctor’s stern, questioning eyes, and faltered despairingly: “You can tell him that--that I will--stay.”