"No right!" she exclaimed. "Ha! ha! Then I will take the right! You stole Laurie Meredith from me, and now you are going to be punished for your treachery."
"Punished! As if I had not already suffered enough!" the wretched girl cried, in pathetic despair.
"You are going to suffer more yet," hissed Jewel, with blazing eyes. "I am going to keep you locked up here, and allow you nothing but bread and water, and not enough of that. You shall wish yourself dead every day, but there will be just enough bread to keep you alive in misery—no more!"
Flower's beautiful face turned ghastly, her blue eyes stared at the cruel girl with a dazed, horrified look.
"Oh, Jewel, I wish I were dead already! I have nothing left to live for now!" she exclaimed. "But, still, would it not be too horrible to starve me now? It—it would be a double murder, for—for—oh, Jewel, did you not forget the child?"
The piteous pleading for her unborn child only angered Jewel the more, and with scornful, cutting phrases she taunted her with her disgrace and misery, and reiterated her intention of torturing her in return for what she called her treachery.
When she left the room Flower believed that her fate was sealed. Jewel had revealed her real self so plainly that she could hope for no mercy and no pity.
She wept bitterly for the little unborn child, that through Jewel's cruelty would have to die. She had hoped somehow that she would find Laurie before it was born, and that all would yet be well. For surely, surely, he had not deserted her. It was only that some unfathomable treachery on Jewel's part had kept them asunder. She did not want to believe him false.
"But I must die, all the same, and he will never know how I suffered through my love for him," she sighed, day after day, as her strength waned under the scanty diet of dry bread and stale water served to her daily by Jewel, with cruel taunts and scornful looks for sauce.