“I will excuse you, since your business is imperative,” she replied, gayly, and kissing the tips of her fingers to him, passed on toward Bonnycastle. Cecil merely lifted his hat, in token of farewell, and hastened toward his office, his mind a chaos of gloomy thoughts. Violet’s desertion and her mocking letter to Amber rankled in his heart with a pain that the devotion of his new betrothed could not assuage. It seemed like a cruel mockery of fate that Amber, and not Violet, was to be his wife. How often he had dreamed in his doting fondness of the glad future day when he should lead his beautiful, golden-haired love to his mother, telling her proudly that Violet was to be his wife and her daughter, and make joy and sunshine in their home. Alas! the dream was over. Violet was false and vain; she loved gold and social rank more than a true and loving heart. She had thrown him aside, and Amber was to reign in her stead--Amber, who was true and noble, but whom he could never love as he did her heartless cousin. “This withered spray of mignonette You gave me, from my heart I take, This sick sad heart you taught to ache, And fling it in the restless sea. I would my thoughts of you could be So flung away from me; and yet I cannot break the cruel net!” Poor Cecil! the future looked very dark and gloomy to his despondent heart as he wended his way officeward, and Violet filled his thoughts, to the exclusion of triumphant Amber, who had hastened to Bonnycastle and imparted her news to Mrs. Grant. The lady was surprised, though she did not permit Amber to suspect it. Intuitively she had read the girl’s heart, and knew that love for Cecil had prompted all her kindness, but she had not expected that her son would so soon forget his lost Violet. The truth flashed quickly over her mind. She understood that Cecil had sacrificed himself to pay the debt he owed Amber for saving Bonnycastle to his mother. “Dear, noble boy!” she thought, tenderly, and kissed Amber very fondly, while she registered a silent prayer that Cecil would soon learn to love the beautiful girl to whom he had plighted his hand since she had proved more worthy of his heart than lovely Violet, who had once been her favorite. CHAPTER XXXIX. “I HAD HOPED--BUT ALL IS OVER NOW!” A week passed, very quietly and wearily to our sweet Violet in her seclusion at the home of Mrs. Lavarre. To her restless heart, tortured by suspense and anxiety, the time seemed endless, but the advice of her two new friends was still to wait a while and take no steps to break up the mystery that surrounded her flight. “If I might only write to Cecil,” she sighed, and the thought of his trouble weighed like lead upon her spirits. She knew not what story her enemies had invented to impose upon his credulity. Perhaps Amber had declared that she was false and heartless, and had married Harold Castello knowingly, and of her own free choice.