"Love affairs do not interest you, Sally," he said, with a laugh. "My
dear," he said, suddenly, "you are not at all like your mother in
disposition. Could you ever love any one very much?"

"I do not know, papa," she answered. "I do not love many people. I only
care for a few. In the way you mean, love would be a fire with me, not a
sentiment."

How vividly the words came back to him afterward when her love proved a
devastating fire!

She had turned suddenly to the window, and seemed to forget his
question.

No one knew what a depth of passion there was in the heart of this girl.
If any one should have asked her what she craved most on earth, she
would have replied, on the spur of the moment--"Love!"

CHAPTER III.

THE TERRIBLE WAGER AT THE GREAT RACE.

A month had gone by since the two sisters had met the one man who was to
change the whole course of their lives.

Louise Pendleton made no secret of her interest in handsome Jay
Gardiner. She built no end of air-castles, all dating from the time when
the young man should propose to her.

She set out deliberately to win him. Sally watched with bated breath.

There could be no love where there was such laughing, genial friendship
as existed between Louise and handsome Jay. No, no! If she set about it
in the right way, _she_ could win him.

As for Jay himself, he preferred dark-eyed Louise to her dashing,
golden-haired sister Sally.

The climax came when he asked the girls, and also their father and
mother, to join a party on his tally-ho and go to the races.

Both dressed in their prettiest, and both looked like pictures.

The races at Lee were always delightful affairs. Some of the finest
horses in the country were brought there to participate in these
affairs.

As a usual thing, Jay Gardiner entered a number of his best horses; but
on this occasion he had not done so. Louise declared that it would have
made the races all the more worth seeing had some of his horses been
entered.

"Don't you think so, Sally?" she said, turning to her sister, with a gay
little laugh; but Sally had not even heard, she was thinking so deeply.

"She is anticipating the excitement," said Mrs. Pendleton, nodding
toward Sally; and they all looked in wonder at the unnatural flush on
the girl's cheeks and the strange, dazzling brightness in her blue
eyes.

They would have been startled if they could have read the thoughts that
had brought them there.

There was th