Sweet Violet

“Violet, I love you!”

The most romantic girl in the world could not have chosen a fairer scene for such beautiful words.

Violet had wandered down to the river, whose fringe of golden willows gave Judge Camden’s place its name. The pretty stream went singing by the foot of the sloping green lawn, and the girl loved its voice, like a mother’s lullaby.

She threw herself carelessly on the green, mossy bank murmuring, plaintively:

“I wonder if Amber spoke the truth this morning when she claimed Cecil for her lover. If she did, he is a heartless flirt, for all his looks and words and actions have seemed plainly to declare that he preferred me!”

The rosy mouth quivered with grief, and tears dimmed the dazzling, dark-blue eyes, for Amber had been very harsh that day when the two girls were quite alone. She had chided sweet Violet for going about clothed always in simple white.

“How silly you look, Violet, always in white, like a great baby! Have you no colored gowns?”

“Dozens of them, Amber, but I like my white gowns better these sweet, warm summer days.”

“My India silk is just as cool,” cried Amber, smoothing down the soft folds of green flowered silk with her dainty, jeweled hands.

Only last evening she had heard Cecil Grant declare that a pretty girl always looked angelic in white, and that was why the storm had burst on Violet’s head to-day.

But, all unconscious of her cousin’s bitter jealousy, the lovely girl shook back her golden locks and answered, smilingly:

“I like my white gowns better.”

Amber’s eyes grew dark with hate for her pretty cousin, and she flashed out, angrily:

“You wear them to please my handsome lover, Cecil Grant, because he said white gowns were pretty! You are trying to steal him from me!”

Gentle Violet stared at her angry cousin with wondering blue eyes and cried, breathlessly:

“I did not know you claimed Cecil for your lover, Amber, for I thought—thought——”

She paused, with a lovely blush.

“You thought he admired you, Miss Vanity? Well, you were bitterly mistaken, let me tell you! We were engaged before you came home from school, and Cecil has only been amusing himself with your credulity, while I looked on and applauded the fun! But the joke has gone far enough now, and the nonsense must come to an end. Ever since you came home you have tried to supplant me in Cecil’s heart, and I will no longer endure this rivalry! I——”

But she paused in her angry speech for want of a listener. Poor Violet had rushed from the room in tears.

Her grief was keen and bitter, for Cecil’s smiles and looks had wiled away her girlish heart, and it was cruel to hear that he loved another.

She had wandered down to the river-bank, her heart aching over the perfidy of handsome Cecil, who had made such audacious love to her with his tender, dark eyes while he was engaged to Amber.

“I—I—hate him!” she sobbed, miserably. “He is a wretched flirt, and Amber is no better to let him fool me so wickedly! I should like to punish them both for their treachery to me. Why didn’t they tell me frankly at first that they were engaged to be married and save me all this bitter pain?”

And all the while, behind the shade of the golden willows, Cecil Grant had been watching his little love in her soft, white gown and listening to her petulant complaints.

Suddenly he started forward, crying out, eagerly:

“Sweet Violet, you must not think such unkind thoughts of me, for I am not Amber’s lover, in spite of all she has told you. My darling, I love you!”

He gazed at Violet with adoring eyes, and she blushed to hear from her lover’s lips those sweetest words in the language, “I love you!”

“Sweet Violet, I love you!” cried Cecil Grant, ardently, and he sank down beside her, catching her little snowflake of a hand in his, pleading tenderly:

“I adore you, my little darling! Will you be my wife?”

It was an abrupt proposal, but Cecil knew that his tete-a-tetes with Violet were always interrupted by Amber, so when he saw his darling stealing down to the river all alone, he said to himself that he would follow and make hay while the sun shone.

He did not think that any one had seen him going toward the house, so he changed his course and went after Violet.

And he was just in time to catch her sorrowful, wondering exclamations over his supposed perfidy.

He comprehended like a flash the deceitful game Amber Laurens had been playing, and determined that sweet Violet should not doubt him a moment longer.

So, while the summer sunset was gilding the sky and the waves with molten gold, and the bird sang to his mate in the greenwood tree, the blue-eyed little beauty listened, beneath the shady willows, to the sweetest story man ever breathed to woman’s ears. The old but ever new story of Love.

And no nobler man than Cecil Grant ever whispered the story, no fairer, purer maiden than Violet ever listened to it with blushes of tender joy.

But the summer breeze, as it sighed through the willows, had a mournful sound, and the river gliding by the green, flowery banks murmured low of mystery and tragedy and sorrow.

“Cecil, I cannot marry you!” cried Violet, and she added, sadly:

“You belong to Amber. You were betrothed to her when I came home!”

He denied it with passionate vehemence:

“I admired Miss Laurens very much, but I only called on her to pass away the time. I never spoke to her of love or marriage!”

“Then you were a wretched flirt, Cecil Grant! for your attentions made me think you loved me, and all our friends predicted our speedy marriage!” cried an indignant voice, and there was Amber, magnificently beautiful in an elaborate white gown and gleaming, amber jewels.

She had watched him from her window going down to the river and followed him, eager for an interview on this romantic spot.

And this was her reward, to hear his avowal of love for her cousin and indifference for herself.

Oh, how cruelly her proud and loving heart was stung by the serpent of jealousy coiling there!

She could have slain the pair of lovers, so close together there beneath the shade of the golden willows.

And she could not repress the bitter, reproachful words with which she startled them from their sweet love-dream.

Cecil Grant sprang to his feet, crying, eagerly:

“I beg your pardon, Miss Laurens, if I have indeed acted so imprudently as you assert. My only excuse is that I did not think. You had many admirers besides myself, and how could I guess that your choice had fallen on me? I am very, very sorry. Will you forgive me?”

“Never! never!” she cried, bitterly, and with burning tears, as she rushed away, and left him alone with his fair young love, sweet Violet.

They gazed a moment in each other’s eyes, then Cecil drew her to his breast and held her strained in a long embrace.

“You are mine, Violet! mine forever!” he whispered, tenderly. “Never mind Amber. She will get over her disappointment and marry another.”

But he did not know the fiery, burning heart of Amber Laurens.

She had loved him with a passion that was intensified to madness by his loss.

And as she fled wildly back to the house, she registered a burning oath that Cecil Grant should never find happiness with Violet Mead.

“She must give him back to me, or I shall die of despair!” she cried, with burning tears, that almost blistered her beautiful cheeks.

She had never thought that Violet was her equal in beauty, never believed that they could be rivals in love.

The shock of her awakening was terribly intense. Reason seemed to totter on its throne.

She had loved sweet Violet in a careless, cousinly fashion before, but now all her love turned to jealous hate.

Pacing the floor of her sumptuous apartment, like a beautiful, angry tigress, she brooded over her bitter defeat, and wondered how she could punish her cousin for the triumph she had won.

Nothing she could do to Violet seemed too cruel to satisfy her thirst for revenge.

She would have liked to see her cousin dead in her coffin, and stand by and hear the clods rattling harshly down upon her grave. The sound would have been music in Amber’s ears. From a beautiful, imperious, loving girl, she was transformed into a jealous, angry, revengeful woman. Blighted love had changed the current of her thoughts, her hopes, her very life. She had but one aim now. It was to sweep her lovely rival from her path, and win Cecil Grant’s heart at last.