"What strange story is this that is being whispered around, Love, that Dainty has deserted you and eloped with a more favored lover?"
"There is the note I found on her pillow. You are welcome to read it," he replied, coldly.
She took it up from the table, glanced quickly over the contents, and groaned:
"What a wicked girl to throw you over at the eleventh hour like this! How will you bear the shame of it, my poor boy, jilted like this, at the very altar, by the poor nobody whom you had stooped to raise to your side?"
Love answered not one word. He simply rested his head on his elbow, and stared curiously into Mrs. Ellsworth's eager, excited face with his dark, penetrating eyes as she continued:
"I am pained for you, my dear Love, but not at all surprised. I feared something like this, for I knew that Vernon Ashley was Dainty's lover, not Ela's, and I believed that love would triumph in the end over the greed for gold. Poor Dainty! she must have loved him well to sacrifice all her ambitions for a poor man's love. But she will be happier with him than she could have been with you. The hand without the heart does not promise well for wedded bliss."
Still without a word, he listened to the fluent tide of her speech, a strange, mocking light in his eyes, whose portent she could not fathom.
She continued, insinuatingly:
"But Dainty Chase has done you a cruel injustice, Love, for, besides depriving you of a bride to-day, she has cheated you out of your inheritance. Remember, unless you are married to-day, your fortune reverts to me!"
He bowed in silence, and Mrs. Ellsworth added, nervously: