“Was I, Amber? Then I am very, very sorry. Will you forgive me?” sweetly. “Willingly, child; for no one can be angry with a sick person’s vagaries,” Amber answered, with a condescending air. Violet sighed softly and continued: “When I see Cecil again, I will tell him that perhaps I was wrong in my accusation against you, Amber, for I was so ill and my mind so dazed that perhaps I distorted the truth.” “Alas, Violet, I fear you will never see Cecil again, for grandpapa swears you shall not, and is hurrying up the preparations for your marriage with the man he has chosen for you.” To her chagrin, Violet answered, firmly: “Grandpapa is only wasting his time. I will never marry any man but my own dear Cecil.” “Ah, Violet, how can you help yourself? Grandpapa’s will is law to us. We must obey him, for we owe him everything!” exclaimed Amber, craftily, advising the obedience she would not have yielded herself. But Violet’s pale cheeks warmed rosily, and a flash of resentment brightened her languid eyes as she cried: “I owe grandpapa obedience in everything but the sacrifice of my whole life, Amber. Why, it would be a wicked sin to marry another man, with my heart full of Cecil.” “But the ‘other man’ is a millionaire, Violet, and Cecil is poor, with only an old name and some ancestral property, that he has no money to keep up properly.” “I do not care about the money. I could be happy with Cecil in a cabin!” “Poor Violet! And yet, as surely as you live, grandpapa will make you marry the other man!” “Never!” cried Violet, with heaving bosom and flashing eyes. “No man but Cecil Grant shall ever call me wife. Grandpapa might force me to the altar with this hated stranger, but I should take poison and fall down dead at his feet before his ring was on my hand, like the heroine of Ralph Washburn Chainey’s beautiful poem, ‘A Broken Marriage.’” “What did she do?” inquired Amber, who had not read the verses. “Let me read the lines for you,” Violet answered, taking up a magazine from the onyx table by her side. She opened it and began to read aloud, in a low voice, freighted with the fullness of a sorrowful heart: A BROKEN MARRIAGE. “Stop the service! Still the singing! Smile no more, but bow the head! For the bride, so young and winning, Lies before the chancel, dead. “Marriage kisses change to partings; Tear aside the bridal vail; That golden band has rent her heart-strings; ’Stead of laughter comes a wail. “No more want of marriage splendor, Death has ta’en the place of pain; No more need of bridal favor, Love doth call on love in vain. “Paler than the snow she lies-- Colder than the winter morning! Oh, why did she so despise Love’s devotion and God’s warning? “She who swore to wed no other, At the altar kept her vow; When they tore her from her lover, Made her to proud Mammon bow.