Reader, Guy Thornton was not a fool, and Daisy was not a fool, though I admit they have thus far appeared to disadvantage.  Both had made a great mistake; Guy in marrying a child whose mind was unformed, and Daisy in marrying at all, when her whole nature was in revolt against matrimony.  But married they are, and Guy has failed and Daisy is going home, and the New Year’s morning, when she was to have received Guy’s gift of the phaeton and ponies, found her at the little cottage in Indianapolis, where she at once resumed all the old indolent habits of her girlhood, and was happier than she had been since leaving home as a bride.

On the father, Mr. McDonald, the news of his son-in-law’s failure fell like a thunderbolt and affected him more than it did Daisy.  Shrewd, ambitious, and scheming, he had for years planned for his daughter a moneyed marriage, and now she was returned upon his hands for an indefinite time, with her naturally luxurious tastes intensified by recent indulgence, and her husband a ruined man.  It was not a pleasant picture to contemplate, and Mr. McDonald’s face was cloudy and thoughtful for many days until a letter from Tom turned his thoughts into a new channel and sent him with fresh avidity to certain points of law with which he had of late years been familiar.  If there was one part of his profession in which he excelled more than another it was in the divorce cases which had made Indiana so notorious.  Squire McDonald, as he was called, was well known to that class of people who, utterly ignoring God’s command, seek to free themselves from the bonds which once were so pleasant to wear, and now, as he sat alone in his office with Tom’s letter in his hand, and read how rapidly that young man was getting rich, there came into his mind a plan, the very thought of which would have made Guy Thornton shudder with horror and disgust.

Daisy had not been altogether satisfied with her brief married life, and it would be very easy to make her more dissatisfied, especially as the home to which she would return must necessarily be very different from Elmwood, Tom was destined to be a millionaire.  There was no doubt of that, and once in the family he could be molded and managed as the wily McDonald had never been able to mold or manage Guy.  But everything pertaining to Tom must be kept carefully out of sight, for the man knew his daughter would never lend herself to such a diabolical scheme as that which he was revolving, and which he at once put in progress, managing so adroitly that before Daisy was at all aware of what she was doing, she found herself the heroine of a divorce suit, founded really upon nothing but a general dissatisfaction with married life and a wish to be free from it.  Something there was about incompatibility of temperament and uncongeniality, and all that kind of thing which wicked men and women parade before the world when weary of the tie which God has distinctly said shall not be torn asunder.