“I beg your pardon, Miss Laurens, if I have indeed acted so imprudently as you assert. My only excuse is that I did not think. You had many admirers besides myself, and how could I guess that your choice had fallen on me? I am very, very sorry. Will you forgive me?”
“Never! never!” she cried, bitterly, and with burning tears, as she rushed away, and left him alone with his fair young love, sweet Violet.
They gazed a moment in each other’s eyes, then Cecil drew her to his breast and held her strained in a long embrace.
“You are mine, Violet! mine forever!” he whispered, tenderly. “Never mind Amber. She will get over her disappointment and marry another.”
But he did not know the fiery, burning heart of Amber Laurens.
She had loved him with a passion that was intensified to madness by his loss.
And as she fled wildly back to the house, she registered a burning oath that Cecil Grant should never find happiness with Violet Mead.
“She must give him back to me, or I shall die of despair!” she cried, with burning tears, that almost blistered her beautiful cheeks.
She had never thought that Violet was her equal in beauty, never believed that they could be rivals in love.
The shock of her awakening was terribly intense. Reason seemed to totter on its throne.