Cecil Grant had met Amber Laurens first while her cousin was away at boarding-school. He admired the brilliant brunette very much, and showed her enough attention to set the gossips of Greenville to predicting a match between the extremely handsome pair.
But, suddenly, when the summer was at its goldenest, the Virginia skies their bluest, the flowers their fairest, Violet Mead came home from school, her curly, golden head full of romantic fancies, herself the sweetest flower that bloomed at Golden Willows, the judge’s picturesque country home. She had never had a lover, but the romantic little maiden had begun to dream already of her fate.
When Cecil Grant met Violet, in her bonny, joyous girlhood, so happy and so lovely, it was like a revelation to his burning heart.
He realized in a moment that his admiration for Amber had been but an idle fancy for a coquettish beauty. Let others hesitate as they would over the cousin’s beauty, he thought Violet the truest, fairest, purest, and most charming girl in the whole world. His heart went out to her in a tide of resistless love, and he vowed to win her for his worshiped bride.
And if jealous, imperious Amber had not already given him her proud, passionate heart, he might have succeeded in his aim and realized his dreams of happiness and bliss.
But, day by day, Amber Laurens had marked his adoration for Violet, and at last she woke up to the fatal truth that she had lost her admirer. The sleeping tiger was aroused in her nature, and from that moment sweet Violet’s fate was sealed.
Ah, the pity of it that love should ever change to hate—that a jealous nature should stop at nothing till it had laid waste all the fair flowers of hope and joy springing to life in a young girl’s heart!
“This is where the roses grew,
Till the ground was all perfume,
And whenever zephyrs blew,