ompany at the door of the tent, Olive had not seen her at all. It now
began to seem strange to her, and she had decided to look for her
cousin.

Ela had walked away from the crowd and the lights, nursing a secret
unhappiness, love and ambition waging a desperate war in her heart.

She had loved Vernon Ashley very dearly; but the ambition to make a
grand match had caused her to throw him over in the most heartless
fashion, ignoring his letters, and refusing him a single interview,
though he prayed for it so humbly.

The discovery to-day of Ellsworth's engagement to Dainty discouraged her
hopes of marrying him; but still there remained the hope of being made
her aunt's heiress, so she steeled her heart and fought down her
murdered love in its heaving grave, saying to herself, consolingly:

"It is painful at first, because I really loved him well; but I shall
soon get over the worst, and forget."

She was turning toward the crowd and the lights again, when suddenly a
dark form emerged from behind the tree, a pair of hands grasped her
wrists in a steely grip, and a low, menacing voice hissed in her ear:

"Cruel, heartless girl, you shall stay and hear me at last!"

CHAPTER XII.

A MADDENED LOVER.

"What is there that I should turn to,
Lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barred with gold,
And opens but to golden keys.
Every gate is thronged with suitors,
All the markets overflow;
I have but an angry fancy,
What is there that I should do?"

Ela trembled with fear when those hands clutched her and those words
were hissed in her ear, for she knew she had come to her reckoning with
her wronged lover.

And no one knew better than herself the mad, jealous temperament with
which she had to deal. Vernon Ashley's love was a frenzy, a tornado,
sweeping all before the wild rush of its passion.

He had spent all the force of this passion on the pale-faced, gray-eyed
Ela, and she had returned it with all the love of which her weak nature
was capable.

If Mrs. Ellsworth's invitation had never come, Ela would have married
her lover, and been as tolerably happy with him as it was possible for a
woman whose god was self, and who worshiped gold as the most precious
thing in life.

The sudden wild ambition to win the rich master of Ellsworth made her
sweep aside like chaff every obstacle she found in her way, and on
leaving Richmond, a cold and cruel letter went to