ied Violet, emphatically, as she paused.

"Oh, Violet, I beg of you to be reasonable," pleaded the woman, almost
in tears. "Just think what your life must be! One of the highest
positions in England is offered you by a young man of irreproachable
character; he loves you devotedly, and there is nothing he would not do
for you if you consent to become his wife. Besides a large income which
he will settle upon you, you will have an elegant home in Essex County,
a town house in London, and a villa on the Isle of Wight. There is no
earthly reason now, whatever there may have been two months ago, why you
should not listen to his suit."

Violet shivered with sudden pain as her sister thus referred to the
death of her lover, and the fact that no plighted troth now stood in the
way of her accepting Lord Cameron's proposal of marriage.

"No," she wailed, "I suppose there is no reason, save that I do not love
him--that my heart is dead, and I have no interest in life, no desire to
live."

"You may imagine now that you can never love him, but time heals all
wounds," her sister returned; "and since you can now feel that you will
wrong no one else by marrying him, you might at least devote yourself to
him and secure his happiness by accepting him."

"Do you imagine that he would be willing to marry a loveless woman--one
who had no heart to give him?" Violet questioned, with curling lips.

"He only can answer that question himself," responded Mrs. Mencke, with
a sudden heart-bound, as she thought she saw signs of yielding in her
sister. "Oh, Violet, do not throw away such a chance. What are you going
to do in the future? How do you expect to spend the rest of your life if
you refuse to marry at all?"

A thrill of intense agony ran through the young girl's frame at these
probing questions.

How indeed was she to spend her life? How could she live without
Wallace?

She had not thought of this before, and she was startled and appalled by
the apparent blackness of the future.

"Oh, I don't know--I don't know!" she burst forth, in a voice of
despair.

"As the wife of Lord Cameron you would at least have it in your power to
do a great deal of good, to say nothing of the happiness you would
confer upon him," suggested Mrs. Mencke, craftily.

It impressed Violet, however, and she sat in thoughtful silence for some
time.

One thing had forced itself upon her during this conversation, and that
was that she could not spend her l