Ronald Valchester was a fine musician, and had a beautiful voice. No one would sing or play after him usually.

The contrast was too great. Perhaps it was for that very reason that Violet asked Jaquelina to play directly after Valchester had vacated the piano-stool after singing an exquisite air from a favorite opera.

For a moment Jaquelina seemed tempted to refuse. The warm color rose into her cheek as they all looked at her, her scarlet lips trembled, but Violet said quickly:

"You must not refuse, Lina. We have all played now but you, and it would not be fair for you to decline."

"Allow me," said Walter Earle, gently leading her to the piano.

Was it any wonder if a faint thrill of pleasure and triumph swelled the girl's heart as her white hands fluttered lovingly over the pearl keys?

She remembered last year. How ashamed she had felt that she could not play; how the young girls had looked at her pityingly and, she vaguely fancied, disdainfully, because she knew so little.

They did not know how hard she had practiced since. Everyone was surprised that she should try after Ronald Valchester.

He himself looked at her a little uneasily. Everyone expected a failure.

Walter Earle opened the portfolio of music and held it open before her, but she shook her head.

"No, I will play something from memory," she said.

"Now I know she will make a failure," Violet said to herself, "for my music-teacher always told me never to play without my notes before me."

But Violet made no allowance for genius, which acknowledges no law, and is sufficient unto itself.

Jaquelina touched a key or two softly so that the sound seemed to be the answer to a caress, then her hands began to fly across the keys like white-winged birds.

People looked at each other. The magic power of genius was in those slender fingers—

In a moment she began to sing. She had chosen the pretty, familiar ballad of Annie Laurie.

Not one in the room but knew that only a powerful and well-trained voice could do justice to the melodious but difficult strain.

But Jaquelina's voice—clear and fresh as a nightingale's—soared upward without the least apparent effort.

The sweet, pathetic ballad was rendered exquisitely. There was a perfect hush throughout the room until it ended. Then they crowded around her.

"Another," and "another," and "another," they pleaded when she would have risen. It was Violet at last who brought it to an end by saying carelessly:

"Let us go back to the dancing now. We can have music every day, but dancing only now and then."

"Thank you," said a low voice over Jaquelina's shoulder as she was passing out of the door. She looked back and saw Ronald Valchester's face looking down at her with bright, shining eyes. "You have given me a great deal of pleasure," he said.

"I am very glad," she replied, and the next moment, she scarcely knew how it happened, he was walking by her side, and her hand was resting on his arm.

They went out upon the lawn and down the laurel walk.

"Instead of dancing will you give me this half-hour?" he had said to her. "I wish to talk to you about this beautiful treasure you have possessed so long unknown to us all."

"What do you mean?" she asked, as they wandered along the path beneath the whispering laurels.

"Your voice," he said. "Do you know, Miss Meredith, that it is really marvelous? I cannot tell you how it has surprised and delighted me."

And again she said, simply as before:

"I am glad."

He looked at the lovely young face and saw that she was pleased, but not at all surprised.

"Someone has told you this before," he said quickly. "I am not the first to lay a laurel at your feet."

In the soft light he saw the color deepen in her cheeks and the long-fringed lashes droop low.

"My teachers have told me that my voice was fine," she said, quietly, "and—and I have sung in school-concerts a few times. The people praised me, then."

"It is no wonder you were not afraid to sing after me," he said. "I was afraid for you at first. You see I have practised for many years and people think me a better performer than the most. But I own that my light has paled before a brighter star."

"You must not say so," she said quickly. "I have only had a few months' training. My voice is not at all cultivated."

"It is naturally superb," he answered; "I have heard voices in opera that were no sweeter than yours. And yet they were prima donnas whom all the world praised. Perhaps you have heard that, too, before."

"My teacher told me I might successfully choose an operatic career," she answered quietly, yet with a sigh whose meaning he did not understand.

"I hope you will not do so," he answered quickly. "I have always so much disliked the idea of a public life for a woman."

"We talked of that at school," she replied, "but our singing master thought quite differently. He declared that a really fine voice actually belonged to the world."

"Shall you return to the school this winter?"

"No," with a quickly suppressed sigh.

"You have wearied of it, perhaps," he said.

"No," she said again; then, with a deepening color, "I have spent all my money, that is the reason. Have you forgotten, Mr. Valchester, that all the money I had was the reward I received for capturing the outlaw chief?"

The soft eyes raised to his face saw a shadow fall over its handsome contour.

"I—I had been trying to forget all about him," he said, constrainedly. "What have they done with the fellow, Miss Meredith?"

"He is still confined in the county jail, I believe," she replied. "His counsel have been using every possible means to defer the new hearing of the case which was asked for and promised. Uncle Meredith says they are waiting for popular indignation to abate in hope of obtaining a more lenient verdict."

"Very likely," said Ronald Valchester, and then there was a constrained silence.

Jaquelina broke it herself in a voice that was slightly tremulous:

"I—am afraid I did not do right that night, Mr. Valchester. I did not think—as I have since done—that it was not a fair return for his kindness to me—for he was kind—kinder than any one knew."

The pretty penitence in her face touched him, but he did not speak.

"I have puzzled over it often and often," she went on, slowly and thoughtfully, "I have asked myself whether my private obligation to him should have outweighed the good of the country at large. I have never been able to satisfy myself. Tell me, Mr. Valchester, did I do right or not?"

"Miss Meredith," he answered, "many persons have asked me the same question, but I have never given my opinion to anyone."

"Then, of course, you will not tell me," she said, disappointed, yet far too shy to insist upon it.

"No, I will not now. I may do so at some future time," evasively.

"Do you think," she said, just a trifle nervously, "it was worth while to attach any meaning to his threat of vengeance? Sometimes I have felt afraid."

"I should not give it a thought," he replied. "It is not probable he will ever have the chance to harm you even if he wished it. No doubt the best part of his life will be passed in a prison cell."

"Oh, I hope not," the girl cried out in irrepressible sorrow; "I cannot bear to think that I have been the cause of depriving anyone of liberty. I did not think of all these things in the fatal moment when I saw him peering at me behind that laurel there. Now I feel as if I had betrayed a human being to endless pain for a paltry two hundred dollars."

Ronald Valchester looked before him silently at the weird, flickering shadows on the graveled path, and made no reply.

"But I wanted the money so very, very much," she added, appealingly.

Valchester looked down at the slim, white hand lying on his black coat sleeve, the taper forefinger sparkling

"Did you never think of parting with your diamond ring?" he said, abruptly.

Lifting her wondering gaze to his she saw his eyes fixed on her mother's ring. She drew her hand from his arm and held it up to the light. A hundred shimmering rays flashed on the jewel.

"You do not mean that it is really a diamond?" she cried, with sparkling eyes.

"Did you not know it?" he asked, surprised.

"I thought it was only a pretty, shining bit of glass," she answered. "Is it really and truly a genuine diamond? and worth—how much?"

He took the warm, pretty hand in his on pretense of examining the ring. At that touch a quick, electric thrill ran from heart to heart.

"Oh, girls, here she is," cried Violet Earle's voice at that moment, in a tone of apparent gaiety. "What a pretty tableau! Flirting with Mr. Valchester under the laurels."