t had goaded him to
jealous frenzy.

It was simply blood-curdling, the demoniac look on Ashley's face; and
Olive watched him with a creeping sort of terror; for Ela had confided
to her that it was he who had fired at Lovelace Ellsworth the night of
the festival, and uttered dark threats of vengeance that now recurred to
her mind and filled her with alarm.

"He is bent on mischief. His eyes glare like a madman's or a drunkard's,
I am not certain which; but either way they bode evil. I must warn Ela
of her peril," she thought, nervously taking a step forward, but pausing
instantly in consternation; for at that moment Lovelace Ellsworth rushed
into the room, his handsome face pale as death, his dark, curly hair
pushed back in disorder from his high, white brow, his eyes flashing
with a strange fire, his ashen lips curled back from his white teeth
with a mocking smile.

Consciously or unconsciously, he made his way straight to where Ela
Craye was standing, pausing just at her side, and the act sealed his
doom.

The man at the window had heard of the wedding that was to take place,
and he had returned to Ellsworth, hoping to persuade Ela to take him
back into her favor, now that all hope of a rich match was over.

But in the days while writhing in the throes of rejected love, the man
had cast to the winds all honor and manliness, and drowned memory and
sorrow in the flowing bowl.

A piteous wreck of his former handsome self, he now peered through the
window, hoping to attract Ela's attention; but, unfortunately, no
premonition of the truth caused her to turn her limpid gray eyes toward
the dissipated lover now half crazed with thoughts of either love or
vengeance.

And while he watched and waited, he heard the talk of Dainty's flight
and Mrs. Ellsworth's promise--they should not be disappointed in the
wedding--Ellsworth would persuade one of her other nieces to marry him.

His brow grew dark, his heart beat heavily, his breath came thick and
fast with fear. In his passion for Ela he felt sure that Lovelace could
choose no one but her, his heart's fickle queen.

"It shall never be!" the maddened lover groaned to himself in jealous
fury, for he had said to himself, day after day, that ere Ela should
become the bride of another, he would stretch her dead at his feet, and
give her sweet white beauty to the worms and the grave rather than to
the arms of a rival.

The man was temporarily insane. Love and despair and r