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“The young victims, Lucien and Maggie Taylor, were too much frightened to hold to their frail support. Their tragic fate has plunged an excellent household into mourning. Bitterly my new acquaintance lamented her folly in consenting to the excursion; but how can a man in his senses add to her condemnation when she looks through such eyes, and speaks with such lips? Not I, I assure you.

“Miss Dent is visiting a relative in Brooklyn, and in my character of physician, I have been kindly received. The strangest part of it all is the odd way that girl looked at me when she knew enough to look rationally at anybody; and her obstinate persistence in leaving my house before she was fit to go. And it was all I could do to induce her to see me again. But her cousin was quite cordial, and now I may claim to have established an easy footing at the house. But about Evelyn Howard–don’t, my dear aunt, if you have a spark of mercy, require me to see her now.”

* * * * *

A month passed by, and October, in glorious tints of autumnal beauty, shed its light over the city. In a handsome drawing-room on Brooklyn Heights sat Weldon Gardner and Lina Dent. The young girl wore a soft white dress, and her figure was replete with roseate health and beauty.

The young physician was pleading strongly and earnestly, gazing into the eloquent eyes before him as if his very life hung upon their favor.

“But I know so little of you, Dr. Gardner,” was her remonstrance in answer to his ardent suit, “true you have earned my life-long gratitude–“

“Don’t mention that, if you have any regard for me,” he interrupted, in a sort of disdain.

“Yes,” she urged, “I must mention it. To you I owe my life, and perhaps, my reason. Of course I know you in all points of family, position, and professional success; but your own true self–how can I know that you will secure my happiness? Is there nothing you can tell me of yourself which will reassure me?”

And the bright, honest look of her eyes robbed her plain words all possible sting.

“First, tell me that you love me,” he argued, “let me know that it would be sweet to you to place your happiness in my keeping. At least you can do this. You know if you love me.”

She listened with averted look.

“And if I confess that I love you,” she said at length, in a low voice; “if I do this, would it not be mockery to learn, when too late, that I had made a mistake?”

“But, in heaven’s name, Lina, what can you mean? Why do you doubt me? What is there to tell? I could have no secrets–“

Then there rushed to his memory with a force that sent the blood to his brow and almost took his breath, the conviction that he had a secret from her–that he was deceiving her–that it was unmanly to seek her love with a lie on his lips. For a brief season his engagement had been forgotten, or ignored. He had hugged to his breast with unreasoning apathy the theory that the present was enough to consider–that the future must care for itself–that once his promised wife, Lina Dent should be his if all the world conspired against it. But now came the hated thought that Evelyn Howard stood between him and the precious one who had been his day-star since the night when he had nursed her back to life.

Starting up, he strode back and forth, not noting the pale cheeks and startled eyes of the girl who watched him in ill-repressed anxiety.

At length, sitting down beside her, he seized her soft fingers with a grasp of which he was hardly aware. Then instantly relaxing the rigor of his clasp, he pleaded: