He was frank and noble, and he despised anything underhand or mean, but he could no more help making surreptitious love to Flower than he could help breathing. When in the presence of both girls he tried to be quite impartial in his words and looks, that Jewel might not have the pain of seeing her sister preferred before her, but if the dark-eyed beauty left the room for one moment, he would be sure to make some excuse to get by Flower, that he might gaze into her eyes with that long, sweet look before which her glance fell so shyly, while the lovely color flushed up high in her cheeks. Sometimes he ventured to touch the soft, white hand, and by its tremor he realized that the shy, gentle girl was not wholly indifferent to his love.
His passion began at length to find relief in that outlet for the lover's heart—poetry. Passionate "sonnets to his lady's eyebrow" began to overflow perfumed sheets of note-paper. These found their way to Flower in all the romantic methods a lover's fertile brain could invent.
Jewel was on the alert. A jealous pang had begun to tear her passionate heart. She watched her sister and Laurie Meredith with silent distrust. Little by little the bitter truth began to dawn on her mind.
A very fury of wrath swept over her, and she found it impossible to conceal her anger. So one day, when they were walking together by the sea-shore, the gathering storm burst fiercely upon her sister's golden head.
"Cruel, deceitful girl, you are trying to take my lover from me! Are you not ashamed of your treachery?"
"Jewel! Sister!"
"Do not call me your sister unless you are going to stop trying to win Laurie from me, unless you are going to give him back to me!" Jewel cried, angrily, flying into a passion, her dark eyes blazing with jealousy.
Her sister's answer only added fuel to the fire of her wrath, although it was spoken gently, pleadingly:
"Dear, I did not know he belonged to you. I thought you were only friends."