class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 34]"/> one observed Serena's movements. Her eyes glittered with a curious, brassy light. With a swift, gliding movement, she hastened to an old-fashioned cabinet which stood in a corner of the room, and opening it, removed an empty tin box from a shelf. With hands that trembled a little in spite of her efforts to control herself, she carried the box over to the fireplace, and going down upon her knees once more, she lifted the fragments of the smoke-blackened letter and placed them as carefully within the box as though that letter had been worth many times its weight in gold. And so it was. A thousand times over, as Serena Lynne was destined to discover some future day. Securing the lid upon the box, she rose softly, and hastened away upstairs to her own room. Once there, she hid the tin box in her trunk, and locked it carefully. Then, with an inscrutable expression upon her pale, cold face, she glided swiftly down the stairs once more.

On her way back to the apartment where her dead father lay, she paused at the door of Keith Kenyon's room. It was standing ajar, and she ventured to steal inside. He was sleeping heavily under the influence of the strong opiate which Doctor Lynne had given him. Serena stood gazing at the sleeper, her plain face all aglow with rapture, her pale eyes gleaming with a look of devouring love and passionate adoration.

"Oh, my love! my love!" she murmured, softly. "I would lay my life down for your dear sake! I would die a thousand deaths—I would suffer martyrdom to win your heart! Oh, Keith! Keith! my hero, my only love! whom I have loved all my life, ever since my childhood's days, when you were with us; and I have never forgotten you—never ceased to care. Your little sweetheart, you called me then; and you used to tell me that some day, when we were man and woman grown, I should be your wife. And so I shall! You shall call no other woman wife! Oh, Keith! if you do not love me I shall die—I shall die!"

The sleeper moved uneasily upon the pillow, and the beautiful lips parted slightly, while, low and sweet, but clear and distinct to the ears of the listener, came the one muttered word:

"Beatrix!"

It was enough to arouse the slumbering devil in the woman's breast. She started as though she had been shot. A moan of bitter anguish passed her lips, and fell upon the dead silence of the sick-room. She turned blindly, like one groping in the dark, and fled back to the death-chamber.

Her mother glanced up from her grewsome work as Serena entered, and her ghastly face and flashing eyes made the mother start with a strange alarm and terror.

"What is it?" she cried, wildly. "What else has happened?"

"Where is that girl?" demanded Serena, glancing wildly around the room.

"She has gone for assistance," returned Mrs. Lynne, slowly. "Some one must be found to come to my aid tonight, and Beatrix offered to go. She said that Keith's horse had been brought here by the men who drove them home, and she would ride it over to Burtonville, to the Rogerses. Some of them will come immediately, I know. Serena, in Heaven's name, what is the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost!"

"So I have—so I have!" sobbed Serena, bitterly. "I have seen the ghost of my dead love—my broken life! Listen, mamma. Unless you get rid of that girl Beatrix Dane—or whatever her right name may be—my happiness will be ruined forever. Mamma! mamma! I have reason to believe that Keith is falling in love with her already!"

"What? You are mad, Serena!"

"I am not. I wish I were. He is muttering her name over and over in his sleep even now. She saved his life, you know; and that, of all things, would serve to attract and draw them together from the first. Mamma, I tell you I am lost—lost! I love him! I love him! I do not deny it, and if I can not win his love and be his wife, I shall die!"

"Hush! Be quiet. Control yourself. You shall be his wife. We will keep Beatrix away from him, and in a few days, when her money comes, she shall be packed off to New Orleans, and good-bye forever to Miss Beatrix Dane. And before Keith leaves this place to return to his home he must make you his wife. We will try to bring that about, Serena. It must be done!"

"It shall be! He shall care for me!" repeated the heartless girl. "Here, by the side of my dead father, I swear that I—and I alone—shall be Keith Kenyon's wife!"