But, day by day, Amber Laurens had marked his adoration for Violet, and at last she woke up to the fatal truth that she had lost her admirer. The sleeping tiger was aroused in her nature, and from that moment sweet Violet’s fate was sealed. Ah, the pity of it that love should ever change to hate--that a jealous nature should stop at nothing till it had laid waste all the fair flowers of hope and joy springing to life in a young girl’s heart! “This is where the roses grew, Till the ground was all perfume, And whenever zephyrs blew, Carpeted with crimson bloom. Now the chill and scentless air Sweeps the flower-plots brown and bare!” CHAPTER II. LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM. “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.