“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.