Sad they were, indeed, poor Jessie, thus wrenched from all she had known and loved in the past, and thrown alone on the world, to face the untried future. Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet. At the clanging of the doorbell she started quickly to her feet with a strange, inexplicable throb of the heart. She flew out into the hall and turned the doorknob to admit the caller. Had she guessed that it was the little god Cupid knocking, would she have unbarred the door? Alas! destiny is strong. We could not shirk it if we would. The fair little hand shot back the bolt and turned the doorknob. And as the lid of Pandora’s box was opened, letting out evil on the world, so with the opening of the door Jessie let in love and pain: Those kinsfolk twain. On the threshold confronting her stood a young man of perhaps four and twenty, and if you had searched New York over you could not have found a more perfect specimen of manly grace, strength, and beauty. Tall, athletic, with fine, clear-cut features, eyes like deep, blue pools under thick-fringed lashes, brown, clustering locks of silken gloss and softness, he was a man to look at twice with frank admiration, and when you added to nature’s gifts the best efforts of the tailor, a man to set any girl’s heart throbbing wildly in her breast. “I wish to see Madame Barto, please,” he said, in a voice of such strong agitation that Jessie looked at him in wonder at the deep pallor of his handsome young face and the lines of pain between his knitted brows. “I will tell madame,” she said, leaving him in the anteroom, walking impatiently up and down. Madame was deeply interested in her detective story, and she yawned impatiently, saying: “Tell him I’m engaged with a caller, and will be at leisure in about ten minutes.” “But he is in a hurry, and in some great trouble, madame. You could read it in his face and his voice, so strained and tremulous, poor fellow!” cried Jessie warmly. Madame laughed heartlessly: “Oh, I know the type! Jealous young fool, just had a quarrel with his sweetheart and wants to find out if she will ever make it up with him! Let him wait. Suspense will cool his temper. Meantime, I must have ten minutes to finish this thrilling chapter! Go!” turning eagerly to her book again. The girl hurried back to the caller, who was pacing impatiently up and down the room just as she had left him. “Madame Barto will be at leisure in ten minutes,” she said gently, sitting down to her work again, while the young fellow went to the window and drummed a restless tattoo on the pane. Jessie’s fingers had grown suddenly tremulous, and the color flushed up in her young face, for through her drooping lids she felt him gazing at her with suddenly aroused attention. And one looking once at Jessie Lyndon could not help looking twice.