“Pray do so,” cried the scheming mother, whose small means were dwindling away so fast in the effort to keep afloat in fashionable society till her daughter’s beauty won a rich husband.
Jessie wrote and dispatched her pleading note before she removed the dainty hat from her fluffy blonde hair, and when evening came she was waiting for him, gowned in dainty white, befitting the warm June weather.
To her amazement and anger there was no reply, and the next morning she read, in the society columns of her favorite daily, that Chester Olyphant had left New York the previous evening on a yachting trip with several other young men, and would be absent two weeks.
“Well, thank Heaven, there are only men in the party, so he will not be exposed to any other girl’s fascinations on the trip, and I’ll be waiting for him when he comes back,” cried Jessie, swallowing her chagrin the best she could.
CHAPTER II.
ALL FOR LOVE.
Leola Mead sprang to the back of her mettlesome pony and almost flew down the mountain road, her great, dark eyes flashing with anger, her cheeks glowing crimson, her wealth of golden locks streaming like a ruddy banner on the breeze. Against the tight bodice of her riding habit her young bosom heaved tumultuously with the angry throbs of her heart, for Leola had just had a bitter quarrel with her guardian, and now gave vent to her excitement by giving free rein to Rex in a breakneck ride.
It was a lovely June morning in the mountains of West Virginia, all Nature at her sweetest and fairest, and Leola had been planning such a happy, happy day; but when she came out from breakfast ready for her morning canter, there stood her saturnine old guardian asking her to step into the library for a moment before she rode away.
Leola obeyed him, pouting, for she hated to lose time indoors this gladsome, golden day.
There was no love lost between her and her grim guardian, anyway, for he was a stern old man, reticent and mysterious, spending most of his time in a horrid laboratory up in the tower chamber of the rough old stone house, where the country folk said he was working either to wrest from Nature the secret of making gold, or the still greater mystery of distilling a magic elixir of life. About the neighborhood he got the sobriquet Wizard Hermann, and looked the character with his lean, stooping form, long black hair floating over his coat collar, strongly marked features and cunning mouth, while his keen, gray eyes, under bushy brows, seemed to pierce one through with their questioning gaze.