There were times when she was half maddened by the memory of the past, by the thought of the horrible humiliation and pain she had endured long ago--alas! that she endured still. The old hot resentment and jealousy burned still in her heart, turned her blood to fire, and fevered her pulse. The fierce aspiration breathed over her husband's dead body for vengeance on the two who had blasted her life was fresh on her lips still. "It was with her the night long, in dreaming or waking, It abided in loathing, when daylight was breaking, The burden of bitterness in her! Behold, All her days were become as a tale that is told, And she said to her sight, 'No good thing shalt thou see, For the noonday is turned to darkness in me.'" One very interesting event had occurred in the Fielding family since their twins had entered upon their seventeenth birthday. Faithful old Maria, after bringing them through their childish ailments up to the years of girlhood, had bought a cabin near by with her savings of years, and "gone to herself," as she expressed it. Silly old soul, she had been beguiled by the attractions of a young mulatto buck who had his eye on her small savings, and she married him and settled down to married life with all its joys and woes, which in her case proved chiefly the latter. Jewel and Flower, who dearly loved their black mammy, sympathized very much with her ludicrous love affair, and even with the access of religion she acquired when she "jined de shoutin' Methody, for de comfort o' my soul, chillen, for dat dissipated Sam 'most sen' my soul to de debbil!" CHAPTER III. With the tragic story that surrounded their birth, and the tragic elements that lay slumbering in their own natures, it was most unfortunate that Jewel and Flower should have lost their heart to the same man. Laurie Meredith was a handsome young man of about twenty-three years, tall, and finely proportioned, with a very attractive face. He had a broad, intellectual white brow, crowned by wavy, dark-brown hair, glorious, brown eyes that could look dangerously tender, and his firm yet sweet lips were half hidden beneath a silky-brown mustache, whose long ends curled around a well-formed chin cleft by a charming dimple. He was spending his vacation from college at the sea-side resort where the Fieldings lived, and he had made the acquaintance of Jewel and Flower in a most romantic fashion, having saved the life of Jewel one day when her pretty little boat had overturned in deep water. Swimming boldly out to the sinking girl, he had succeeded in saving her just as the pretty dark head was disappearing for the last time under the treacherous waves. Then, righting the overturned boat, he succeeded in getting into it with his exhausted companion, and rowed back to shore.