"What does it matter if I am running away?" Flower cried, growing desperate in her despair. "No one cares for me now. Laurie has deserted me, mamma is changed and cold, and you have grown to hate me so bitterly that I feared to come and tell you of my trouble and beg you to pity and help me. Let me go, Jewel, and throw myself into the sea and end it all."
Jewel's eyes took on a baleful look in the twilight; she muttered, hoarsely:
"If I were quite sure you would do that I'd let you go; but you wouldn't. You were running away to seek Laurie Meredith, you know you were!"
"I have a right to seek him if I choose!" Flower cried, roused to defiance by her sister's inhumanity. "He is my husband, and no one knows it better than you, Jewel, for I am quite sure that it was you who took the certificate from my desk. Oh, sister—dear sister!" she cried, growing suddenly wild and pathetic as she fell on her knees before the hard-hearted girl, "you have tortured me long enough, have you not? Even such jealous hate as yours must be satisfied by the torments I have endured in the past eight months. Oh, give me back my marriage-certificate! Let me give it to my mother; perhaps then she will forgive me, and I need not go away."
It was a thrilling picture, the lovely, wretched, forsaken girl kneeling in the gloom of the shadowy porch, her fair face upturned so pleadingly, the tresses of shining gold falling in disorder over the dark cloak as she looked up at that dark, proud face so transformed by jealousy and anger that it appeared almost satanic, for no pity lightened in the cruel, triumphant smile that parted the curved, red lips.
"Ha! ha! so you were married—a likely story!" she hissed, scornfully. "And the poor little bride has lost her marriage-certificate. That is unfortunate! But, come, let us tell mamma. Perhaps she will forgive you, anyhow."
With a wild, mocking laugh she dragged Flower to the parlor, which Mrs. Fielding had just entered, and holding her hapless sister tightly by the arm, exclaimed:
"Mamma, I caught Flower running away from home, and I brought her back."
Mrs. Fielding, startled out of her apathy at once, started to her feet, crying wonderingly: