It was true: Leola realized it, and felt how impossible it was to keep hidden the happy secret of her love. Indeed, she fairly ached to tell it to some sweet, sympathetic girl friend, and why not Jessie, whom she had known from childhood, and who had always been fairly friendly? True; the young lady was twenty-three, four years older than herself, but as each was madly in love with a splendid young man, there was a bond of sympathy between their hearts that might bring good results if they fairly understood each other.
She suddenly made up her artless mind to confide in beautiful, blue-eyed Jessie, and beg her to intercede with her guardian to consent to her happiness, but because tears were very close to her own dark eyes, she put Ray aside for a moment to recover herself, saying, laughingly:
“Only think, Jessie, I have a rich lover, too. Our neighbor, Giles Bennett, who has gotten rich by coal since his wife died, wants to marry me, the little girl he used to dandle on his knee! Now, what do you think of that?”
“A splendid match for you, Leola, and I hope you will accept him,” declared Jessie, frankly.
“Oh, no, no, no!” Leola cried out, quickly, and Jessie retorted:
“More fool you, then, to let such a chance slip through your fingers! If I weren’t going to marry Chester Olyphant I’d take old Fatty off your hands myself. But it seems, from what you let slip just now, that there’s a poor young man in the case—Ray Chester, you said, and if you do not tell me the whole story instantly I shall die of curiosity!”
Leola, with her beautiful face glowing like a rose, exclaimed:
“I don’t want you to die, Jessie, so I am going to ‘’fess,’ as the children say, and, after all, I think I ought to confide in you, for it is through you all this happiness has come to me.”
“Through me,” gasped Jessie, and her lips went white, while a cold hand seemed to press all the life from her heart with a swift, horrible suspicion that centered around that name “Chester,” breathed so sweetly just now from Leola’s lovely lips.
But Leola did not observe these signs of emotion. She was looking down, bashfully, and playing with a bunch of red roses in the belt of her simple white gown. Her beauty was glorified by the love that thrilled at her heart.