He had expected this intelligence, yet when the blow fell, it was as though it had killed the living, beating heart in his bosom, withered it, as lightning blights and withers a giant oak and fells it to the earth. Queenie was married at last, and to his rival. That was the one thought that whirled through his brain, and almost drove him mad. She was lost to him forever! Ay, as much as though she lay in the grave, and again and again such terrible waves of grief swept over him that they threatened to dethrone his reason. He did not care to live an hour longer. All that he loved on earth was lost to him. He had loved Queenie Trevalyn as few men love in a lifetime. She had drawn him on, encouraged him by all the wiles with which a finished coquette ensnares her victims, and then had cast him off without the least compunction. But, ah, how strange a thing is the human heart. Through it all, no matter what had befallen him at her fair, false hands, he loved her still, with a love which refused to be killed. Although he hated himself for his weakness, he would have given all he had in the world, ay, his very prospects of Heaven! if he could have averted that marriage. Ay, given every dollar of the wealth which had come to him too late, to have been standing on the spot where he was lying now (with his face buried in the long grass, uttering bitter moans) with Queenie Trevalyn’s hands clasped in his, looking down into the depths of her wondrous eyes listening to her dulcet voice, though in his innermost soul he realized that every word those sweet, rosy lips were uttering was false--false! “I must banish such a wish or I shall, indeed, go mad!” he sobbed, dashing his hand over his eyes, as though he could shut out the picture which his memory conjured up at will. But it was useless; he had loved too well, and the wound was too deep. If he had a revolver with him in that hour, the rest of his life story would never have been written, for he would have ended it then and there. How long he remained there like one stunned he never knew. He took no heed of the flight of time. He was suddenly brought to a realization of his surroundings by the touch of a little hand, cool as a lily leaf, upon his burning brow, and Jess’ voice saying, in alarm: “Now I know that you are very ill, indeed, Mr. Moore, when I find you lying here where I left you hours ago, and groaning so,” and the dark, curly head was bent down close to his, and Jess began to cry bitterly over him, stroking his face, and then his clenched hands, as a child might caress a loved animal lying at her feet cruelly hurt.