Each of the personals was signed “Grandfather,” and each one provoked only a contemptuous curl of the lip from sweet Violet.
Her bitter experience of his cruelty and unkindness had left Violet no faith in her grandfather’s affection. She believed that he was only acting on Harold Castello’s behalf.
Accordingly she ignored the personals, and clung more closely to her refuge under the hospitable roof of the gentle Widow Lavarre and her hapless daughter Lena.
At the end of a week the personals assumed another form:
“Will Violet please let me know where she is, and I will keep her secret if she wishes me to do so. I am very unhappy over her flight.
Uncle George Mead.”
Violet’s heart was so touched by this appeal that she would have replied to it, but her friends dissuaded her and whispered caution.
“Harold Castello has perhaps enlisted the Meads on his side, and if you write to them, it may be they will deliver you into his hands. Remember how rich he is, and what a power his great wealth gives him in influencing other people. Doubtless your relatives think that yours would be an enviable fate as his wife,” declared Lena; and there was so much truth in her words that Violet decided to ignore this personal as she had done the others. It seemed to her that the whole world was in league against her, that she had no friends outside of the two lonely women who gave her so warm a welcome beneath their roof.
CHAPTER XLI.
JUDGE CAMDEN’S RETURN.
“It is quite strange how long Judge Camden stays away!” Mrs. Shirley remarked to Amber, when the old man had been absent two days.