Accordingly, within the hour, the light phaeton stopped at the corner, and Cecil brought out a letter for Violet. “I will bring you an answer to-morrow morning, and perhaps we can yet outwit grandpapa and Harold Castello,” declared Amber, archly, and drove away, after giving him an entrancing smile, and a glance that was almost too fond for friendship. CHAPTER XII. CUPID’S POSTMAN. Amber did not intend to break faith with Cecil in the promise she had made. She carried his fond love-letter to Violet that evening. But she had taken it to her own room first, carefully extracted it from the envelope, and read every word. Her dark cheek paled with anger, her heart throbbed with jealous pain at the words of love that Cecil had written to his darling. “How I hate her for this!” she cried, bitterly. “How I would like to wring her heart as she has done mine!” And the dark flash of her eye boded no good to her innocent rival. She replaced the letter so carefully in its envelope that no one would have guessed the seal had been tampered with, and carried it to Violet. “I have brought you a treasure--a letter from Cecil,” she exclaimed, gayly. How the blue eyes sparkled, how the cheeks flushed with joy as Violet caught the letter and pressed it to her warm lips, murmuring: “My darling!” She tore it open and read it eagerly through twice, then looked up at Amber, her eyes shining through happy tears. “Oh, how can I thank you, dear Amber?” she cried, gratefully. “By believing that I am your true friend,” replied the crafty girl. “Oh, I know now; I am sure of it, or you would not have brought me this letter, that has made me so happy!” and again Violet kissed her love-letter with blushing cheeks. Ah, how bitterly, how jealously Amber envied her that exquisite happiness, she did not dream, or she would have started in affright at the evil in her cousin’s heart. She thought that Amber had overcome her love for Cecil, and was content to be only his friend, and to forward his love affair with another with generous self-forgetfulness. But sweet Violet had never felt the pain of a slighted love, or she might have known that only the noblest hearts can forget or forgive a wrong either real or fancied. Alas, a hopeless love is one of the things seldom forgotten and rarely cured, coiling like a serpent around the heart, and stinging it to death. “Thou bidst me crush it out and live it down, Stamp out its memory from my aching brain; Forget I loved, remove the thorny crown That presses on my brow with maddening pain! “I’ll tell thee thou hast never felt the fire Of Love’s impassioned flame, or thou wouldst know That hope deferred, the unattained desire, But fans the embers into brightest glow. “I tell thee, while we hold our earthly sway, My every pulse shall beat response to thine; Ay, more, when from the earth we pass away Thy spirit’s haunt shall still be sought by mine!”