“But, of course, we will keep it a secret just at present, and tell only your dear mamma. I think she is fond of me, Cecil, and I hope she will be pleased.”
“I am sure she will be pleased,” he replied, kindly, then added: “I wish I could go back with you, Amber, to tell her the news, but I am compelled to meet a client at the office this morning.”
“I will excuse you, since your business is imperative,” she replied, gayly, and kissing the tips of her fingers to him, passed on toward Bonnycastle.
Cecil merely lifted his hat, in token of farewell, and hastened toward his office, his mind a chaos of gloomy thoughts.
Violet’s desertion and her mocking letter to Amber rankled in his heart with a pain that the devotion of his new betrothed could not assuage.
It seemed like a cruel mockery of fate that Amber, and not Violet, was to be his wife.
How often he had dreamed in his doting fondness of the glad future day when he should lead his beautiful, golden-haired love to his mother, telling her proudly that Violet was to be his wife and her daughter, and make joy and sunshine in their home.
Alas! the dream was over. Violet was false and vain; she loved gold and social rank more than a true and loving heart. She had thrown him aside, and Amber was to reign in her stead—Amber, who was true and noble, but whom he could never love as he did her heartless cousin.
“This withered spray of mignonette
You gave me, from my heart I take,