There was a moment's silence. The dark eyes and the blue ones looked straight into each other. In the first moments of that interview Jaquelina had read the secret of the other. She was not surprised when Violet answered desperately:
"I would try to win him for myself, then."
"You love him?" said Jaquelina, in a tone of the gentlest pity.
Violet lay back in the great, velvet arm-chair, her face as pale as death, her white hand pressed to her side to still its heavy beatings. She answered, gaspingly:
"Yes, I love him—I have always loved him—before you ever saw him. If I do not win him I shall die!"
Then the white lids closed and she lay unconscious before the eyes of her dreaded rival. Jaquelina bent over her and chafed the nerveless hands in her own with tenderest pity.
"Poor Violet," she murmured, "I never dreamed of this, yet I have been her unconscious rival for years. Must I give him up to her? Alas! he is not mine to give."
It was several minutes before Violet revived. She looked up into the face of her rival and whispered fearfully.
"It is my heart, Lina. I cannot bear any great excitement. I have inherited my mother's disease."
The look of grief and pity that came over Jaquelina's sensitive features disarmed all Violet's passionate jealousy and resentment for a moment. A blush of shame colored her pale cheeks, and she cried out with a sudden, remorseful impulse: