“That is enough. Now go,” the stricken girl answered, with icy calmness, but he laughed mockingly and answered: “Forgive me for disobeying you, sweet one, but I should be desolate without your company. Come Violet, one kiss, and let us get reconciled to each other.” He advanced a step, but her outstretched white hands waved him back. “No nearer, as you value your life!” she cried, wildly. He halted in consternation. “What do you mean, Violet? Have you a hidden dagger about you?” he demanded. “No, I have no weapon to defend myself, Harold Castello, and yet I solemnly swear that your life shall pay the forfeit if you force your love upon me. Do not stare, for I will find a way to kill you unless you leave me. I am desperate, maddened. I am your prisoner, but I shall never be more to you than I am now! So go and leave me to my misery!” she answered, in such a voice and with such a face, that he deemed it politic to obey, momentarily awed by the contact with a desperate woman at bay. CHAPTER XXVII. “THAT BEAUTIFUL FORM WAS MADE TO BE DRAPED IN RICH ATTIRE!” As the door closed on Harold Castello’s form, Violet flung herself on the couch with a choking sob. “Oh, Heaven, how wicked I feel! There is murder in my heart!” The wrongs she had suffered had indeed almost maddened gentle Violet. Torn from her lover, betrayed by her cousin and her grandfather into the power of the man she hated, hers was indeed a terrible fate. No wonder that her gentle nature was almost frenzied by the shock, and that she felt a mad, guilty longing to take the life of the man who had come so fatally between her and happiness. “I could kill him if I only had a weapon, and rejoice in my crime. Oh, they have changed me into a fiend!” she cried, wildly. Her loathing eyes wandered about the beautiful room that her hated husband had prepared for her, and she shuddered in disgust, hating it all with sickening horror. Yet how differently she would have viewed it had it been as Cecil Grant’s bride she had come to this place. The beautiful rooms would have charmed her then, in her happiness with the one she adored. But Harold Castello’s bride! Oh, the limitless anguish and horror of that awful thought! “His from the dainty foot’s slight tip Up to the crimson of the lip-- His from the halo of the hair To the white hand’s magic in the air! “All her bearing seemed to say: I am yours. Bid me obey; But the rebel in my soul Spurns to answer your control. “Rich was the shadow of the room, And warm the shifting firelight’s bloom That lofty wall and ceiling wreathed; Heavy the perfumed air she breathed. “But the lightnings of her eyes More than swift and low replies, Whose music hid the words they said, Sharper than an arrow’s head. “Hushed and told him all was loss, All his wealth but gilded dross; Bars retain nor rubies buy Love, whose light wings cleave the sky!”