She had been holding back one terrible thing for a _coup d'état_ at the last, and she decided now that the fitting moment had arrived in which to startle Flower into a slightly premature illness and thus make sure of her death at once.
It was a fiend's plan, a fiend's wish, but Jewel never faltered in her deadly purpose. Her evil passions drove her on to the commission of a deed that, call it by what specious name she chose in her own mind, would be no less than murder.
So she went into Flower's room one night carrying a lighted lamp in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
In this long, weary month she had never permitted Flower the use of a lamp at night, thinking that the long, interminable hours of darkness would add to her torture, as indeed they had done most effectually.
So the poor girl started up from her bed in alarm, dazed by the brilliant light of the lamp, and filled with a wild hope that Jewel was about to relent toward her, she exclaimed, wildly:
"Ah, sister, you bring me a light. You begin to relent. Blessings on you, dear Jewel! Now, give me food, too, I am so hungry, so thirsty, and the air of this closed room stifles me! Open the window and let the sweet air of spring come in! Then bring me food, food, for I am starving."
Jewel set down the lamp and took from her pocket a beautiful, red-cheeked apple.
"I will give you just one bite of this if you will return it to me when you have taken it," she said, with a mocking laugh. And Flower promised; but when she had taken as large a bite as her pearly teeth could compass, her horrible hunger and thirst overcame her, and she clung wildly to the luscious fruit, begging, pleading for it, until Jewel forced it from her after a short, sharp struggle, and restored it to her pocket.
"You are not half as hungry and thirsty for that delicious fruit as I was hungry and thirsty for Laurie Meredith's love!" she said, bitterly. "I loved him with my whole heart, yet you took him from me, and now you shall suffer for it! Ah, no, Madame Flower, I have not relented! I am not going to give you any food, nor water, nor fresh air; and if I brought a light it was only that I might gloat over your agony when you read something that I came upon accidentally this evening, and which will add the last drop of bitterness to the overflowing cup of your misery."