"May I see you for a little while, Lina? I have important news for you."

It was two weeks after Jaquelina had come to the farm-house that she stood holding Ronald Valchester's card in her trembling hand and reading the few lines scribbled upon it. Her uncle Charlie had brought it to her. He told her that Mr. Valchester was waiting outside.

She started up nervously when Mr. Meredith gave her Ronald's card, and told her that he was waiting to see her. An impulse came over her to decline to grant him the interview he asked.

"He has come to tell me when he will be married to Violet," she said to her wildly beating heart. "I—I am not so strong as I thought I was—I do not believe I could bear it. It was cruel to come. I should not have thought it of Ronald. He must have known how it would hurt me. Oh! I should not have come here—so near to the sight of Violet's happiness."

Then it crossed her mind that she was weak and selfish. She had begged him to marry Violet. She must be brave enough to bear what she had caused.

"Uncle Charlie, you may tell him to come in," she said, with lips that trembled strangely.

Then when he had gone out and closed the door she drooped into a chair and hid her poor, marred face in her hands. She could not bear for Ronald Valchester to behold it in its changed and altered guise.

She heard the door open softly, then Ronald's unforgotten step as he crossed the floor. She could not look up. He knelt down beside her and took one of the hands that hid her face and held it tightly in his own.

"Lina, look at me," he said, in a voice that was as tender as a caress. "Do not be afraid to show me your sad affliction."

Jaquelina looked up with something like a sob into the handsome, thoughtful face of her lost lover. It was beaming with an eager joy and tenderness that was like the expression she remembered on it in the brief, happy summer of their betrothal. Even when he saw the face that had frightened Walter Earle's love away, no change came into the blue-gray eyes fixed on her with such adoring love blent with such sweet seriousness.

"Lina, do not grieve for the beauty you have lost," he said. "I am so thankful that your life is spared that all else is of little account."

The sad dark eyes regarded him in wonder.

"Yes, darling," he said, with a smile into the wondering eyes; "all that you have suffered only makes you dearer to my heart."

She pulled her small hand from his clasp and tried to rise.

"Mr. Valchester, you must not speak to me so," she cried. "You forget Violet—you forget everything."

"I forget nothing," he returned. "Listen, Lina, I did not come here simply to pain you. I have news for you. Gerald Huntington is dead."