"I have very little to tell," she said. "I have not known the young girl as long as people imagine. Her uncle saved me from a wrecked steamboat, and she nursed me back to health and strength. Who I am or what I was before that accident, I can not remember; everything seems a blank to me. There are whole days even now when the darkness of death creeps over my mind, and I do not realize what is taking place about me. This sweet, young girl has been my faithful friend, even after her uncle died, sharing her every penny with me. Now she is lost to me forever. She went away, and I can not trace her. There is another feeling which sometimes steals over me," murmured Margaret, "a thought which is cruel, and which I can not shake off, that sometimes impresses me strangely, that somehow we have met in some other world, and that she was my enemy." "What a strange notion!" said Rosamond. "Oh, that thought has grieved me so!" continued Margaret, in a low, sad voice. "I hear that she left you to go on the stage," said Rosamond. "Yes; that is quite true," was the reply. "She went with a manager who was stopping at this house." "Supposing that I should put you on the track of your friend, would you--" "Do you know where she is?" "I think I do," was Rosamond's guarded answer. "But what I was going to say is, if I take you to a gentleman who knows her whereabouts, will you tell him, as you have told me, that she went off with a strange man to be an actress?" "Yes, indeed; why not?" returned Margaret. "We will take the afternoon train," suggested Rosamond. The landlady made no objection to this, and the first act in the great tragedy was begun as the Boston express moved slowly out of the depot, bearing with it Rosamond Lee and her companion. On their journey Rosamond talked incessantly of Jessie Bain, plying the girl beside her with every conceivable question concerning her, until at last Margaret grew quite restless under the ceaseless cross-examination. All unconsciously, her manner grew haughty, and Rosamond noticed it. At a way-station, some twenty miles this side of Boston, a tall, dark-bearded man boarded the train. The only seat vacant was the one across the aisle from the two girls. This he took, and was soon immersed in the columns of the paper which he had taken from his pocket. "Are we almost there?" exclaimed Margaret. The stranger across the aisle started violently and looked around. "That voice!" he muttered. There was but one being in this world with accents like it, and that was Gerelda Northrup, who lay in her watery grave somewhere in the St. Lawrence River. Captain Frazier--for it was he--gave another quick glance at the two girls opposite him, and bent forward in his seat, that he might catch a better view of the one nearest him, whose face was averted.