If Queenie had not conceived, down deep in her heart, a deadly hatred of this girl whom fate had decreed for John Dinsmore, the man she loved, she would have been moved to pity by Jess’ recital. “I have no recollection of a home, or a mother,” continued Jess, resting her dimpled chin on her pink palms, her elbows on Queenie’s knee, and her large, dark, soulful eyes gazing up into the wine-dusk eyes looking down into her own. “The knowledge of that was my earliest grief. I seemed to be like Topsy--‘just growed there, nobody knowed how,’ as that waif and stray expressed it. “I was there on sufferance, as it were. I belonged to nobody, and nobody belonged to, or took the least interest, in me. I roamed where I would, as neglected a specimen of humanity as one would wish to see. I had no friends save the birds in the deep woods, and the wild animals I had trained and made comrades of. “My one passion was reading. I scarcely know how I ever managed to learn how to decipher the stories that I was so fond of. One of the old colored mammies about the plantation had learned to read and write, and taught me as much as she knew--my education ended there. Once a year the cast-off clothing of the housekeeper was made over for me--that was all the interest ever exhibited in me. Nobody ever took the trouble to ask if I were sick or well, satisfied with my strange lot, or lonely, if I had a heart within my bosom that longed for companionship and sympathy, or how I even existed. “No one knew how I would throw myself down in the long grass in the depths of the silent wood, for the birds never told my secret, and cry out to the pitying skies to send me from heaven just one wish, grant me one prayer, and that was for some human being to love, some one who would love me in return; for some one to hold my hands, and ask me in a kind and gentle voice if I were weary, and if I were, to pillow my head on a kindly breast and soothe me while I wept out my woe there. The young girls I read of had happy homes, tender mothers, kind fathers, sisters dear, brothers, and--lovers; why, then, was this height of human happiness beyond my reach? I longed for companionship, and girl friends.” “Had you no thought of--a lover?” queried Queenie, ever so softly. “Yes,” whispered Jess, almost shyly. “I had my ideal of the kind of a man who would captivate my heart; a girl who reads much has her ideal, you know. I often said to myself: ‘If there is a Prince Charming in this world for me, he must be tall, and grave, and handsome, with blue eyes, and chestnut hair waving above a broad, white brow, and----’ Why, what in the world is the matter, Queenie? You look as though you were dying.” CHAPTER XXXV. HIS STORY. The girl sprang to her feet, looking at Queenie in great affright. “You were about to faint. You are ill?” cried Jess, in alarm. “It was only a momentary faintness, dear,” murmured Queenie.