“There is only one letter. It is for Mr. Grant,” he replied, taking it from Cecil’s box and handing it to the beauty with his most obsequious bow. “I thank you,” she answered, as she grasped the treasure, and flitted out with a swish of silk and a waft of perfume that lingered all day in the minds of the admiring hangers-on at the village post-office. CHAPTER XLV. A FATEFUL LETTER. While she was driving away, she looked eagerly, suspiciously, at the solitary letter for Cecil. A cry of jealous anger parted her crimson lips. “From Violet!” It was indeed from Violet, whose anxiety had overridden her discretion and made her write at last to her lost lover to tell him the bitter truth about their parting. “For it breaks my heart to have Cecil believe that I was false to him!” she sighed, to herself, and in a sudden fit of willfulness posted the letter to him without the knowledge of her friends. “He at least will not betray me to my foes!” she thought. Alas! she dreamed not that her cruel, jealous cousin would be on the watch for the letter, and that it was fated to fall into her hands. “I feared, I dreaded this,” Amber muttered, bitterly; then she thrust the letter inside her bosom, to read it at another time. “Cecil shall never see it, never! That doll-faced girl shall never rob me of my darling!” she vowed, vindictively, as she turned toward Bonnycastle, shivering through her rich sealskin wraps, for the day was bitterly cold and wintry, the chill of the hastening December days already in the air. As she drove along, the beautiful face became white and set, and an intense light burned in the golden-hazel eyes. There was a struggle before her that was bitterly humiliating to contemplate, yet she did not flinch from it. She was determined that ere the sun set she would be Cecil’s wedded wife. “Then I can laugh at fate!” she cried, grimly, as she sprang from her phaeton, threw the reins to a servant, and entered the doors of Bonnycastle. Mrs. Grant, who was a semi-invalid, was always hovering over a bright open wood-fire, and rose hospitably to greet her guest. “How cold and pale you look, my dear. Here, sit close to the fire,” she cried, kissing Amber, and drawing forward a large rocking-chair for her occupancy. Amber dropped into the chair, put her face in her hands, and burst into a passion of genuine, fitful sobbing. It came quite naturally, for she was wrought up to the verge of hysteria. “Oh, Amber, what has happened? My dear, dear girl, what troubles you?” implored Mrs. Grant, in surprise and distress, but for some time she received no satisfaction. Amber apparently was too much agitated to speak, and at last sobbed out in the most incoherent fashion: “Wait! Wait--till Cecil--comes! and I will--tell--you--my--miserable story!” Then she subsided into her drenched handkerchief again until presently her betrothed came quickly into the room.