“Boy, are you not aware that your cousin Margaret loves you? I believe that she has worshiped you from her very childhood.” A shade of annoyance passed over Sir Harold’s face, but it immediately brightened again. “Of course, Margaret loves me in a cousinly--a sisterly way, but it is nothing more, colonel, I assure you. Besides, I could not marry Margaret Nugent if she were the only choice left to me. I believe that it is wrong for cousins to marry.” Just then he caught sight of Lady Elaine, and he had eyes for none else. “Come,” said Greyson, “we must not hide in this recess like a pair of conspirators. You are the lion of the evening, Sir Harold, and people will be inquiring for you.” They left the conservatory, and a deep sigh, that was almost a sob, fluttered in the scented air. From behind a mass of sub-tropical plants emerged the figure of a woman--young and exquisitely beautiful--a woman with a face that would have sent Titian into ecstasies of delight. She was of medium height, and her form was outlined in graceful, rounded curves. There was not an angle or a movement to offend the eye of an artist. Her face was oval, her lips red and full, her eyes dark and luminous, her hair as black as the raven’s wing. Among the coils of these matchless tresses was a red rosebud; about her snowy throat a necklet of rubies, and her dress was of amber silk. “He could not marry Margaret Nugent if she were the only choice left to him!” she murmured, her white hands tightly clinching themselves. “And is it for this I have loved and waited all these weary years? Oh, Harold! how can you be so cruel? You have been my ideal--my king! More precious than my hopes of heaven! And now--oh, God, I cannot stand it!” She sank into the lounge that the gentlemen had just left, and covered her eyes with her hands, while her lovely bosom rose and fell with the bitter pangs of her emotion. The merry strains of the waltz were maddening, and the laughter of the happy people in the brilliantly illuminated ballroom made only more apparent her own misery. “He has met his fate in Lady Elaine Seabright, and I had thought him all my own!” she continued, inaudibly. “I have never liked my proud and haughty friend, and I now hate her with an undying hatred! She shall not take from me the man I love! If she does, I swear to fill her life with bitterness equal to that which I suffer now!” Her eyes had grown black, and flashed gleams of fire; her tiny hands were clinched, and her beautiful form swelled with fury. In that brief space Margaret Nugent had changed from a warm-tempered, imperious girl to a determined and revengeful woman. Just then some one touched the keys of the piano, and sang the words of a song that haunted her forever: