“Before we reached the farmhouse again, after the marriage, which I need scarcely add was a secret one, I exacted a promise from the lips of Jess that she would not reveal what had taken place until I gave her permission to do so. “She left with Lawyer Abbot for New York within the hour, I promising to write her within a fortnight after she had arrived here. Instead, I concluded that it was best to come in person, see her, reveal my identity, and leave my future and my fate in her hands. That is my story. I did not know I should find you in this house, Queenie, Heaven knows I did not. I was informed that your parents now resided here. I thought you were wedded to Raymond Challoner, and away in Europe on your bridal trip.” “Instead you find me a widow,” murmured Queenie, looking up into his face with eager shining eyes and her breath coming and going swiftly with every palpitation of her heaving bosom. “Too late, too late!” he muttered in a low voice almost under his breath, but not so low but what his companion caught the words. “No, no!” she cried, vehemently, “it is not too late, John Dinsmore. This girl is nothing to you, less than nothing since you do not love her. Give her half of the Dinsmore millions, since it must be hers, and divorce her, as you had planned, and then--then----” “Good Heavens! What are you saying, Mrs.----” John Dinsmore stops short, and Queenie knows that he cannot call her by that name--that it sticks in his throat. Queenie has the grace to blush, and then she covers her crimson face with her hands! Surely he must understand what she has left unsaid--and he does, and gives a great start of surprise. Hitherto Queenie has occupied a pedestal high as an angel in his heart. Is this the girl whom he has worshiped so madly, this girl who is coolly counseling him to divorce the girl who is his wedded wife? All in an instant of time the mad, passionate love he has had for Queenie dies a tragic death. It was his intention to divorce little Jess, but now that it is proposed to him by another--oh, strange perversity of human nature!--he seems to recoil from it, he knows not why. Queenie’s quick intuition tells her that she has lost ground with John Dinsmore in making such a cool, calculating, unwomanly proposition, but before she can utter another word to mend matters, in his opinion, she hears the voice of Jess calling to her from the corridor outside: “Queenie, Queenie, where in the world can you be? I have looked everywhere for you.” Another instant and she will reach the drawing-room. Queenie darts to the door to intercept her. She must not enter that room in which her husband is standing. But as Queenie flies from the apartment by one door, Jess enters it by another. For one instant she stands fairly transfixed, as her gaze encounters the tall, commanding figure standing there. In the next she has reached his side with such a cry of intense delight that in spite of himself it has gone straight to his heart.