It was but a few hours now to the time for her drive with Amber that was to end in the marriage with Cecil, her heart’s darling, and, locking her door, she proceeded to pack a hand-satchel with such changes as she would need in her little wedding journey to Niagara Falls. Violet loved Cecil with the unchangeable love of a lifetime, and her dearest wish was to be his wife. Yet her young heart was heavy over this enforced elopement. She deplored its necessity, and would have preferred to wait for him several years rather than incur the notoriety of an elopement, but Amber had assured her over and over that unless she married Cecil Grant this evening, Judge Camden would find means to force her to wed Harold Castello to-morrow. Her packing finished, she unlocked the door and sat down at the window, to pass away the intervening time with a book. But she could not interest herself in its pages, and, laying it down, she took some embroidery from her little work-basket and sewed mechanically, her eyes on the work, her mind far away. She was restless and unhappy, despite the fact that she would soon be the happy bride of the man she adored, and who adored her in turn. A weight of trouble, doubt, and strange foreboding lay like lead upon her girlish spirits, and now and then deep sighs heaved her breast, and tears would sparkle out upon her thick, curly lashes. At length the embroidery dropped unheeded in her lap, and Violet sat turning her engagement ring round and round upon her finger, her blue eyes fixed on the far-away landscape. CHAPTER XX. THE STORY OF THE OPAL RING. Suddenly the door opened and Amber entered the room. The handsome brunette looked as gay and smiling as if she, and not Violet, were the prospective bride. “Ah, Violet, moping here all alone! What is the matter?” she cried, lightly. Violet turned her dark-blue eyes from contemplating the distant hills, and fixed them on the smiling, treacherous face of her cousin, sighing: “Ah, Amber, I am so unhappy!” “Unhappy? When a few hours more will see you Cecil’s bride! I am surprised at you, child.” “Oh, Amber, there is a dreadful weight on my heart--a foreboding of evil that I cannot reason away!” “Perhaps you are repenting your promise to Cecil.” “No, no!” “You have had an interview with Mr. Castello. Perhaps his handsome face and the splendid diamonds he gave you, combined with his ardent pleadings, have caused your heart to waver between him and Cecil,” continued Amber, in a bantering tone. Violet looked at her reproachfully and cried: “How can you dream of such a thing, Amber? I hate the man and his jewels. Grandpapa forced me to go down and see him, but I told him candidly how much I hated him, and that I would rather die than marry him!” “But he did not withdraw his suit for your hand?” “No,” Violet answered, with a deep and heavy sigh, and again turned her eyes toward the sky with a sorrowful look, while she restlessly turned the opal ring upon her finger.