She took that name again, and with it, also, Margaret, feeling that
Daisy was far too girlish an appellation for one who clad herself almost
in widow's weeds, and felt, when she stood at poor Tom's grave, more
wretched and desolate than many a wife has felt when her husband was put
from her sight.
Tom had meant to make her parents independent of her so that she need
not have them with her unless she chose to do so, for, knowing Mr.
McDonald as he did, he thought she would be happier alone, but God so
ordered it that within three months after poor Tom's death they made
another grave beside his, and Daisy and her mother were alone.
It was spring-time now, and the two desolate women bade adieu to their
dead, and made their way to England, and from there to Scotland, where
among the heather hills they passed the summer in the utmost seclusion.
Here Daisy had ample time for thought, which dwelt mostly upon the past
and the happiness she cast away when she consented to the sundering of
the tie which had bound her to Guy Thornton.
"Oh, how could I have been so foolish and so weak," she said, as, with
intense contempt for herself, she read over the journal she had kept at
Elmwood during the first weeks of her married life.
Guy had said it would be pleasant for her to refer to its pages in after
years, little dreaming with what sore anguish of heart poor Daisy would
one day weep over the senseless things recorded there.
"Can it be I was ever that silly little fool?" she said bitterly, as she
finished her journal. "And how could Guy love me as I know he did. Oh,
if I but had the chance again, I would make him so happy! Oh, Guy,
Guy--my husband still--mine more than Julia's, if you could know how
much I love you now; nor can I feel it wrong to do so, even though I
never hope to see your face again. Guy, Guy, the world is so desolate,
and I am young, only twenty-three, and life is so long and dreary with
nothing to live for or to do. I wish almost that I were dead like Tom,
only I dare not think I should go to heaven where he has gone."
In her sorrow and loneliness Daisy was fast sinking into an unhealthy,
morbid state of mind from which nothing seemed to arouse her.
"Nothing to live for--nothing to do," was her lament until one golden
September day, when there came a turning point in her life, and she
found there was something to do.
There was no regular service that Sunday in the church where she usually
attended, and as the day was fine and she was far too restless to remain
at home, she proposed to her mother that they walk to a little chapel
about a mile away, where a young Presbyterian clergyman was to preach.