"Indeed? I am very anxious to see her!" exclaimed Jewel, with a half sneer; but Laurie Meredith only laughed. He thought he had seen so many English beauties while abroad; and, after all, none could compare, in his own mind, with the lovely women of his native land. "Where is she, Mrs. Devere?" continued Jewel, angrily, eager to look upon one of whom she was furiously jealous, only because report said that she was wondrously lovely.
"If you will come with me I will present you. I am curious to see the meeting between the loveliest girl in America and the greatest beauty in England!" exclaimed Mrs. Devere, who doted on beauty because she was irredeemably homely herself.
Jewel was mollified by the compliment, and smiled brightly on her hostess and her lover as she rose from her seat.
"Will you come, too, Laurie?" she asked; but he shook his handsome head.
"Excuse me for the present," he replied; and Jewel went away with Mrs. Devere, secretly glad that her lover showed so little interest in the beauty over whom every one was raving.
"And I have been so afraid of her—so foolishly jealous!" she thought, gladly, all her fears set at rest.
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
Laurie Meredith leaned his handsome head carelessly back, and the smile that he had worn for Jewel's sake faded away and left his face grave and sober, as it had grown to be since that summer when he had gone away from the sea-shore, leaving his little love behind him because she had changed her mind almost at the last moment and declined to go with her lover-husband.
His tender thoughts of the dead girl were always mixed with pain and remorse, for he believed that Flower's love for him had been less strong than he had believed it at first. Her refusal to go away with him, and her subsequent short and strange letters, led him to this belief.