But the truth of the matter was that Jess had described John Dinsmore so accurately, just as she had seen him when she had parted from him on the golden sands at Newport, that never-to-be-forgotten evening when she had flung from her the heart and the love in it that she would have afterward given worlds, had she possessed them, to recall. She wondered if Jess could by any possible means have ever met the real John Dinsmore; but in the next breath she told herself that it could not have been; the girl was just conjuring up this mental photograph of the hero who could win her heart purely from her imagination, never dreaming that there had been a man in existence who had fitted that description exactly. Thus, assured that Queenie’s indisposition was but momentary, and that she really cared for her to go on with her narrative, Jess continued: “My life might have gone on for long years more in just that dreary fashion, had not a singular event happened. A lawyer--your parent’s friend, Lawyer Abbot, suddenly appeared at the plantation one day, and asked for the housekeeper of Blackheath Hall. I overheard the conversation between them, and his mission there, which was to tell her that the master of Blackheath Hall had just died abroad, and to inform her as to the conditions of his will, which was, that the girl Jess (meaning me) who was then on the plantation, and who had made it her home there, for many years, was to receive half of his entire fortune, providing she married, within the ensuing twelve months, his heir, and nephew, John Dinsmore. “To cut a long story short, Queenie, this John Dinsmore soon came down to Blackheath Hall for the purpose of ‘looking me over,’ as he wrote the housekeeper that he would do. From the first moment we met, I took a most terrible dislike to him, although he was the greatest dandy imaginable. “There was something about him which seemed to warn me not to trust him, and to fly from him--I cannot explain what it was. As was expected of him, he asked me to marry him; and by dint of persuasion from the housekeeper, I, at length, reluctantly consented, although every throb of my heart seemed to speak and tell me that if I married him I would rue it--rue it--rue it! I felt so terribly about it that it seemed to me I must get away amidst new scenes to get up courage to take the fatal plunge into the turbulent sea of matrimony. “For a wonder, Mrs. Bryson, the old housekeeper of Blackheath Hall, did not oppose my strange notion, as she termed it; instead, she consulted with Lawyer Abbot, and the result was that they concluded to send me to visit you in New York.” At this point in her narrative Jess stopped confusedly, turning from red to white, her heart throbbing so tumultuously that Queenie could not help hearing it. “Go on, my dear,” she said, sweetly. “You cannot tell how interested I am; it is better than reading a love story from a novel.”