the pure, unalloyed delight, the innocent rapture of her first ball—her eighteenth birthday.

Rosamond Arleigh listens to her only child, and as she listens her face grows pale to ghastliness—some hidden anguish seems tearing at her heart-strings—but she tries to smile, and drawing the golden head down, kisses the girl’s red lips.

“My little Violet,” she says, softly, all the beautiful mother-love shining in her eyes, “enjoy yourself while you are young, ‘gather the roses while you may;’ for, oh, my darling, the dark days are coming!”

[Pg 8]

[Pg 8]

Her white hand still clutches that crumpled telegram, and the look of horror deepens in her eyes.

Violet uttered a low cry.

“Mamma! you are ill again! I was afraid when I saw you in the door-way that you were exerting yourself too much, and you still feeble from your late illness. Go up to your room again, will you, dear? Come, let me go with you.”

She put her white arm about her mother’s waist in a pretty, protecting way, and laid her satiny cheek against the pale one with a caressing little gesture.

Mrs. Arleigh forced a smile.

“I am better now. Forgive me, daughter. I had no right to mar your happiness with my melancholy. Go back to the ball-room and dance; I see Mr. Yorke looking for you.”

A swift wave of crimson suffuses the girl’s delicate cheeks, and the big, dark eyes droop shyly; but a sweet smile curves her dainty lips, and the white arms tighten their grasp about her mother’s form.

“Leonard Yorke?” carelessly. “Oh, yes; I see him now. Mamma, you like Leonard, do you not?”

“To be sure; there isn’t a better young man in all Louisiana. But, Violet”—a sudden terror flashing into her eyes and her voice trembling audibly—“surely you do not mean—there is nothing between Leonard and you, is there, my darling?”

She shook her golden head.

[Pg 9]

[Pg 9]

“No-o; of course not, ma mère—not exactly. Only—I like him. There, ‘I done tole you!’ as the darkies say.”

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