It was a Boston newspaper, and the paragraph was simply this:
"As we go to press we have just heard that our esteemed townsman, Laurie Meredith, died very suddenly last night."
[CHAPTER XVII.]
Jewel watched her victim eagerly, breathlessly.
She saw the hue of death overspread the lovely, wasted face, the blue eyes, already dim through the tears that had washed their brightness away, dilate in wonder and horror. Oh, how sweet it was to see that look of mortal agony on the face that Laurie Meredith had loved to kiss! Jewel said to herself that in the months since he went away, she had made her successful rival shed a thousand tears for each and every kiss he had pressed on those lovely, rosebud lips.
But her thirst for revenge was not sated yet. There was yet another sweet draught waiting for her lips in the near future.
All this time she had been keeping up the correspondence with Laurie Meredith, in order to prevent him from coming back South to see Flower. But she said to herself that when the girl was dead she would cease writing. He would become uneasy then, and the chances were that he would soon come back. Then she, the girl he had slighted, she would show him his wife's grave.
What sweetness there was in this thought for Jewel! She gloated over it often, and thought that surely no girl had ever had a more perfect revenge for slighted love than she had taken.
Her thoughts went further yet sometimes.