She was bidden to a grand ball, but she forgot all about it, though she had a costly gown and new jewels to wear. Her thoughts kept going back to the dead past; to the days when she was a little country girl at Stony Ledge with but two great pleasures in her life—her daily rides on Firefly and the offerings of her unknown lover whom she had enthroned as a king in her romantic heart, thirsting for love and happiness.
The twins had taken possession of Firefly when Gran’ther Groves died, and sold him, for how was she to prove that he was really her own? As for the lover, he was lost to her, too. She could never marry him, when she learned he was a Ludington, for it would shock gran’ther, even in heaven, if she had done such an awful thing!
“I wish,” she sobbed, “I wish no one had ever found out the truth! I wish I had married him as Doctor Rupert and never known any different. We should have been so happy. Oh, I wonder what has become of him, and where he is at this moment? Does he love me still, or has his heart turned to another?”
The bitterness of death was in that thought—the bitterness of death, and the anguish of jealous love that tore her heart almost in twain.
Mrs. Hamilton came in so abruptly that she could not hide her pale, tear-stained face from her startled gaze.
“Oh, my dear girl, what has gone wrong?” she cried quickly.
“Everything—my whole life!” cried Eva rashly, desperately.
Mrs. Hamilton knew nothing of the tragedy of Eva’s life. Her brother had kept it a dead secret.
She gazed in wonder at the desperate girl, who added passionately:
“Auntie, dear, help me! advise me! My heart is breaking for some one I loved in the past, but whom fate forbids me ever to marry.”