"Why, Violet, you forget how anxious Lord Cameron would naturally be regarding the state of your health," she answered, evasively; "besides, he has waited a long time for the answer to a certain proposal, and doubtless he is impatient for that."
"He shall have it," the young girl returned, with sudden animation, a crimson flush suffusing her cheeks. "Send for him to come directly here, and I will give it at once."
Mrs. Mencke regarded her doubtfully.
"And it will be——" she began.
"No!" replied Violet, emphatically, as she paused.
"Oh, Violet, I beg of you to be reasonable," pleaded the woman, almost in tears. "Just think what your life must be! One of the highest positions in England is offered you by a young man of irreproachable character; he loves you devotedly, and there is nothing he would not do for you if you consent to become his wife. Besides a large income which he will settle upon you, you will have an elegant home in Essex County, a town house in London, and a villa on the Isle of Wight. There is no earthly reason now, whatever there may have been two months ago, why you should not listen to his suit."
Violet shivered with sudden pain as her sister thus referred to the death of her lover, and the fact that no plighted troth now stood in the way of her accepting Lord Cameron's proposal of marriage.
"No," she wailed, "I suppose there is no reason, save that I do not love him—that my heart is dead, and I have no interest in life, no desire to live."
"You may imagine now that you can never love him, but time heals all wounds," her sister returned; "and since you can now feel that you will wrong no one else by marrying him, you might at least devote yourself to him and secure his happiness by accepting him."
"Do you imagine that he would be willing to marry a loveless woman—one who had no heart to give him?" Violet questioned, with curling lips.