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 anyone 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 the usual crush of vehicles, for the races at Lee always drew out a large crowd. Jay Gardiner's box was directly opposite the judge's stand, and the group of ladies and gentlemen assembled in it was a very merry one, indeed. Every seat in the grandstand was occupied. Both Louise and Sally were in exuberant 

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