The Earles were not staying at a hotel. They were at the residence of a distant relative in a fashionable quarter of the city. Violet had inclosed her address, and the prima donna drove there immediately, full of grief and horror over Walter's dreadful fate.

Violet met her in the elegant drawing-room. The beautiful blonde looking pale, wan and distracted in the dim morning light. Her blue morning robe was all in disorder, her golden hair was disarranged, there were dark circles beneath her eyes, and the soft, blue orbs were drowned in tears.

"Oh, Lina, Lina! I told you so!" she cried, breaking into wild, hysterical weeping. "You have made us all wretched! You have caused poor Walter's death! Oh my brother, my brother!"

Jaquelina stood irresolute in the center of the room, her lips quivering at Violet's passionate charge.

"Oh, Violet, don't!" she cried, lifting her white hands as if to ward off a blow. "I have done nothing! I love you all. I would give my life to make you and Ronald and Walter happy. Tell me of Walter. He is not dead—he will not die! Oh, Violet, do not tell me so! I could not bear it!"

"There has been a duel," Violet cried. "They met outside of the city this morning, and fought. That dreadful man—your husband—shot Walter, and got away himself. We did not know one thing, Lina, till they brought our poor boy home."

"Dead?" Jaquelina asked, with pitiful anguish in face and voice.

"Not dead—but—dying—we fear," wept Violet, wildly.

The beautiful singer knelt by the side of the agitated girl, who had thrown herself down on a silken couch, sobbing and weeping in utter hysterical abandonment. She put her arms around her, and drew the golden head to a resting-place upon her breast.

"Oh, Violet," she murmured, smoothing back the disheveled tresses with gentle fingers, "do not give way so utterly. Try to be calm. It may not be so bad as you think. I cannot believe that Walter will die. He is young and strong. Let us pray that God will spare his life."

There was some moments of utter silence. Violet's grief had spent itself for awhile. She lay passive on Jaquelina's tender breast, her golden eyelids resting on her pallid cheeks.

The delicate lips of the prima donna moved silently for a little while, as if in prayer—perhaps for the wounded man who lay up stairs breathing painfully and shortly. Then she spoke:

"Violet, you will tell me how it all came about? Why did they fight?"

"It was for your sake, Lina," Violet replied, moving uneasily from the clasp of her arm and opening her eyes a moment.

"For my sake?" Lina cried, with white lips. "Oh, Violet, I do not understand."

"Read this," and Violet put a note into her hand. "Walter left it on his dressing-table this morning for me. I found it a little while ago."

Walter had written as follows:

"Dear Sister:—I have challenged Gerald Huntington, and am gone to fight him this morning. I saw him at the opera night before last, and yesterday I sent him a challenge. I have taken Ronald's quarrel on myself. It would not have been right for Ronald to fight him, because if he had killed Lina's husband it would have been wrong for him to marry Lina. So, without Ronald's knowledge, I have taken up Ronald's quarrel. I hope I shall kill the villain, and then Lina will be free to marry Valchester. I love Lina so dearly I cannot bear to see her unhappy. If I kill Huntington I shall fly to a foreign land. If he kills me I shall have done all I could to help my darling to happiness. In either case, Violet, you must tell her that I did it for her sake."

Lina's tears fell quick and fast on those brave, pathetic words.

"Oh, poor—poor Walter!" she exclaimed. "And he has asked for me, Violet?"

"Yes," Violet replied. "Will you go to him now, Lina?"

"Yes," with a slight shudder of dread at what she was about to see.

Violet led her up a richly-carpeted stairway into a darkened, luxurious chamber, where the wounded man lay among the snowy pillows, watched by a skillful surgeon and careful nurses.

Jaquelina went up to the bed. She did not see Ronald Valchester draw back quickly into the shadow of the bed-curtains in fear that it might pain her to see him there.

Walter lay white and still upon the bed, his fair, curling locks brushed back, the long lashes lying on his pale cheeks like one asleep; but at the soft swish of Jaquelina's silken robe he opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Oh, Walter, I am so sorry!" she cried. "Oh, why—why did you do it?"

"Lina, it was for your sake," he replied.

"You should not have done it; it was all wrong," she cried out, quickly.

"Lina, do not blame me," he said, weakly; "I could not help it. I am so sorry for you, dear."

Jaquelina pressed the hand she held impulsively to her lips.

"I remembered what you said," Walter continued, in feeble accents—"that life had given you all save happiness—and I would so gladly have given you that, too, Lina."

"Oh, Walter, you have a noble heart!" she cried, and a faint smile curved his lips.

"But I have failed," he said, so sadly. "I have utterly failed, and the only pleasant thought I have in dying is that I have given my life in the attempt to make you and Ronald happy."

"You will not die, Walter—you must not!" she cried. "I should feel as if I had murdered you! You must try to get well again!"

Walter shook his head in silence, and Lina looked around at the surgeon.

"Oh, sir, he will get well—will he not?" she exclaimed, pleadingly.

"I hope so," he answered, gravely; but her quick ear detected the tone of doubt in his voice.

She looked down at the handsome, white face on the pillow. He was so young, and life held so much for him; yet he was dying—dying for her.

"Walter, you must not go away from us like this! Live—for me!"

Walter's dim eyes flashed wide open, full of eager joy.

"Lina!" he exclaimed, incredulously.

"I mean it!" she whispered, gently. "Try to live, Walter, and as soon as I can be relieved of those galling fetters that bind me I will be your own. I will be as generous as you are. You were willing to give me your life—now I will give you mine."

"Lina, I must not accept such a sacrifice from you," he whispered, almost too weak to refuse the promise she gave so unselfishly.

But Lina murmured with a sad, pretty attempt at archness:

"You must not refuse a lady's hand when she offers it to you herself, Mr. Earle."

Walter's face was radiant with joy and hope as he pressed her hand and whispered:

"If I accept it, Lina, it is not through selfishness, but because if I live I believe that my great love cannot fail in time to make you happy."

"May God spare your life, Walter," she whispered from the depths of her grateful, generous heart.

Then, as she turned her head aside quickly to hide the pain that came into her face at the thought of that other dearer love that might have made her life so fair, she suddenly encountered Ronald Valchester's eyes looking straight into her own.

There was in that straining gaze a look of dumb and hopeless agony that Jaquelina never forgot to her dying day. The beautiful, blue-gray eyes that expressed, as eyes of another color never can, the lights and shades of feeling, were fixed on hers with a yearning pathos that went straight to her heart.

Then Ronald turned quickly and went from the room. It was all in a moment. Walter had taken no notice. With his glad eyes fixed on Jaquelina's face he was praying silently that his life might be spared to him.

When Jaquelina was leaving, almost an hour later, she found Ronald Valchester waiting on the pavement to hand her to her carriage.

When she was seated, he held her hand a moment in his own and bent forward to speak to her.

"Lina," he said, hurriedly, "I meant to go south to-day as you wish me, but that will be impossible now. I cannot desert Walter. He is my dearest friend, and when I was wounded three years ago he nursed me like a brother. Can you endure my presence a little longer?"

"I must bear it—as I have done many things," she said, with her white hand on her heart. "You must not forsake your friend."

Then she lifted her haunting, dark eyes to his face.

"Ronald, you are not angry with me," she said, wistfully. "Walter has loved me through long years. And I could never be yours, you know."

He shook his head with white, pain-drawn lips.

"And Violet?" she said to him, questioningly.

"I spoke to her—a little while ago," he said. "It was only because you wished it, Lina. She will be my wife."

He felt, rather than saw the shiver that ran over the slender form of the prima donna.

"When I marry her," he added, after a moment, "I shall take her far away, Lina. I think it best—as you said—to put the whole width of the world between you and me forever."

She bowed speechlessly. The blue-gray-eyes—black now with a yearning love and fathomless despair—looked into hers gloomily a moment, then the carriage-door clanged heavily between them, the carriage-wheels echoed "low on the sand and loud on the stone."