A long, long sigh quivered over her lips. Her bosom heaved beneath the rich lace fastened with violets, costly as jewels at that season. The diamonds on her rosy fingers flashed as she clasped them together and raised them almost appealingly to Heaven. “Oh, if I could but forget that other!” she half sobbed; “if I could but forget that other, I would be willing to do what they wish! After all, Reggie is very nice, and very handsome, too, and he has been kind to me always--kind and patient; for he must see I am putting him off every way I can. Perhaps he believes me only coquetting and meaning to take him at the last. How disappointed he will be when I refuse him! I pity him, for I know all the pain of hopeless love!” She walked up and down the length of the long drawing-room, her little hands interlocked, her dark eyes full of burning tears. “Oh, my lost love!” she moaned. “How cruel it is that I cannot forget you! I ought to hate you for your deception, for the fraud by which you won my heart! I told you I would never forgive you, too, but can one love without forgiving? Ah, yes, yes, yes; for if he appeared before me at this moment I should send him away from me. I should look at him with cold, proud eyes in which he could read nothing but pride and indifference; I should speak to him scornfully, as to one I hated; I should tell him to leave my presence at once and forever!” A bursting sob swelled her throat as she added: “He would obey me and go, but as he went, the reproachful glance of his dear dark-blue eyes would pierce my heart like a sword. When he was gone I should sink on my knees and ask God to let me die because I could not have him I loved so madly for my own; because the barrier of senseless hate stood between us; because my cousin’s blood cried out against our union!” She went back and looked out of the window as if she could see him going away from her fancied dismissal, with his heart as heavy as her own, but she could not even see the great snowflakes falling, she was so blinded by her hot tears. She was bidden to a grand ball, but she forgot all about it, though she had a costly gown and new jewels to wear. Her thoughts kept going back to the dead past; to the days when she was a little country girl at Stony Ledge with but two great pleasures in her life--her daily rides on Firefly and the offerings of her unknown lover whom she had enthroned as a king in her romantic heart, thirsting for love and happiness. The twins had taken possession of Firefly when Gran’ther Groves died, and sold him, for how was she to prove that he was really her own? As for the lover, he was lost to her, too. She could never marry him, when she learned he was a Ludington, for it would shock gran’ther, even in heaven, if she had done such an awful thing!