He handed the photograph to Dinsmore, while Ballou, with the freedom of an old friend, got up, and coming close to the bedside, looked curiously over John’s shoulder. “If this is the writer of the letter, she is certainly a stranger to me,” remarked Dinsmore, slowly, studying curiously the lovely face laughing up at him, for the picture represented a girl, not smiling after the usual fashion, but, indeed, laughing heartily, and with all her might, straight into your eyes, and challenging an amused smile in return from even the gravest lips. She could not be over fifteen or sixteen. The oval face, with its every dimple displayed, was bewitching, with every promise of future beauty with a year or two added to the girl’s years. The eyes were dark, and deliciously roguish in expression, and she wore the hair which covered the shapely little head in a long braid, tied with a ribbon, wherever the curling tendrils could be ensnared from their persistent effort to break into tiny little curls running riot over the white brow and neck; but the teeth disclosed by that laughing little mouth--were ever teeth so small and white and altogether faultless? “A lovely girl!” said Hazard Ballou, examining the pictured face with the critical eye of an artist. “What has this pretty creature to say to me?” said John Dinsmore, breaking through the apathy which had been wrapped about him like a mantle up to the present moment. “The best way to inform you is to read her letter to you,” remarked Gaines, laconically, quite as curious as the recipient to know the import of the missive; for four years of life as a reporter on a daily newspaper, in the metropolis, had stimulated his bump of curiosity, and he was always in the habit of gratifying it, and ever on the lookout for anything which savored of a sensation or a mystery. “Whew!” he broke forth, whistling as his eyes encountered the first line. “By George, it’s the little Louisiana heiress whom your uncle has decided you must wed to become his heir--the girl around whom his fortune is tied, the string to his inheritance, as you phrased it when we first told you about your uncle’s strange will, Dinsmore.” “I wouldn’t have to think twice in a case like that!” declared Hazard Ballou, still thoughtfully and gravely admiring the pictured, merry, laughing, girlish young face. “Nor I!” said Jerry Gaines, his whole heart in his eyes. Adding: “Hang it, how can you be so indifferent, you lucky dog?” turning upon Dinsmore excitedly. CHAPTER IX. “A LITTLE ROUGH DIAMOND.” “If love should come again, I ask my heart, In tender tremors not unmixed with pain, Couldst thou be calm, nor feel the past mad smart, If love should come again? “In vain I ask. My heart makes no reply, But echoes evermore the sweet refrain, Till, trembling lest it seem a wish, I sigh, If love should come again!”