Presently the house-maid put her head in at the door, giving Jewel a violent start.

"Has the doctor come?" she asked.

"No, miss; but me and the cook thinks we had better carry Miss Flower upstairs and put her to bed," Tibbie replied, with a compassionate look at the silent form upon the floor.

Jewel frowned and considered a moment, then gave her assent to the plan.

Then she added:

"When you come down, you had better lock the door, as she might try to run away. In fact, she was about to do so this evening, but mamma prevented her. Although she has proved so bad, and disgraced the family, we intend to keep her at home and take care of her."

The kind-hearted Tibbie murmured an approval of this kindness, and with the cook's assistance, soon had Flower undressed and placed in bed. Then seeing that she was still in a dazed and half-unconscious condition, and either unable or disinclined to speak, they shaded the lamp and withdrew, locking the door as ordered, and giving the key to the triumphant Jewel.

In the meantime the physician arrived and pronounced Mrs. Fielding temporarily insane.

"I will leave soothing medicine for her, and I will send two nurses from town, for she will have violent paroxysms, and it will take at least two people to restrain her from doing harm to herself or others," he said, and took leave, wondering at the coolness and self-command of this beautiful young girl, whose bright eyes were not dimmed by a tear, as he explained to her the terrible condition of her mother.

He would have been more surprised if he could have read the thoughts of that vindictive heart.

"So she is really insane!" she said to herself. "I am glad of that. There will be no one now to interfere with my plans for Flower. It is true she would have killed her if she had been let alone, but I do not want her to die yet. I want her to live and wither under the shame of her birth, and under the agony of her desertion by Laurie Meredith. I will torment her as much as I can until the child is born, then I hope she will die, and the brat, too, so that when Laurie Meredith comes back I can have the pleasure of telling him that they are dead, and showing him their graves."

Her passionate, jealous love for handsome Laurie Meredith was mixed with hate now, and she delighted in stabbing his heart as he had stabbed hers when he turned from her dark, dazzling charms to her sister's fair, angelic beauty.

Going to her room, she unlocked her trunk and took out some papers, over which she gloated with fierce delight.

"Although I long for power and gold, millions could not buy these from me, for my sweet revenge is better than gold! Ah, how cleverly I parted them! They outwitted me when they managed to steal away and get married, but I've kept them apart ever since, I've made them pay dearly for their temerity!" she cried, exultantly.

The papers she held were the half-burned diary of Charley Fielding, the marriage-certificate and card she had stolen from Flower's desk, and the note she had intercepted on its way to Flower, together with several letters that Laurie Meredith had written to his wife since his departure, and which, through Jewel's clever plotting, she had failed to receive.

She pressed them in her hands, gloating over them with more delight than a ball-room belle would have done over the most priceless diamonds, for they represented the power she thirsted for so ardently—the power to torment those whom she hated.

She cared nothing for the fact, that in spite of all that had come and gone, poor, unhappy Flower was her half-sister still. She only knew that ever since the fatal hour when Laurie Meredith had made choice between them she had hated the blue-eyed, golden-haired beauty with a jealous fury that was as pitiless as death.

She thought she was a very clever girl, she had managed everything so adroitly. In the first place, she had bribed Sam to give her Flower's letter that night, and to take back a reply from herself. She had found out from that letter that Flower was Laurie Meredith's wife, that she was going away with him, and that a telegram had called him away one day sooner, causing him to write to Flower to come at once to him, as he must be far on his way north before the next night, which was set as the time for them to leave.

In that sudden emergency Jewel's keen wits served her well. She remembered that her handwriting was so similar to her sister's that few could tell them apart, so she decided upon a bold step. She wrote to Laurie Meredith in his wife's name, declaring that she had changed her mind about going with him, that she could not bring herself to leave her mother and sister, but that she would be his true and faithful wife, and wait for him until he came back from Germany.

The young husband was most bitterly disappointed, but the telegram that summoned him to a parent's sick-bed admitted of no delay. He went without Flower, but he wrote to her very soon from his Northern home, entreating her to reconsider her determination and join him there.

Jewel had a fervent admirer in the person of the post-office clerk.

By cleverly playing on his vanity she induced him to let her have Flower's letters, and each one she answered briefly, by denying Laurie Meredith's wish and indulging in weak regrets over the haste with which she had wedded him, lamenting lest her mother should find out her folly and withhold forgiveness.

So it was that not one of those loving letters, for which Flower would have given her very life, ever reached her, and Jewel sat here gloating over their possession, while in the very next room poor little Flower lay upon her sleepless bed, an image of despair, wondering if it could be true all that Jewel had told her—that she was a child of shame, her mother a bad, wicked woman, and her father a sinful wretch who had broken the hearts of both her mother and Jewel's.