“Mine is a strange story, Mr. Lisle, as you will at once admit when I have told it you. You know me, and the world knows me, by the name of Ethel Thursby, but that is not my real name. What that is no one knows. Neither does anyone know who were my parents, where I was born, nor, indeed, who I am at all.” Therewith she went on to tell him all those facts in connection with her early history with which the reader is already familiar, beginning with the tragic death of the woman who had passed herself off as her mother on board the _Pandora_, leading up through their adoption of her as their niece by the two Miss Thursbys, to her discovery of the truth as told her in Matthew Thursby’s letter on her nineteenth birthday. It was with growing wonder and interest that Lisle listened to her as, step by step, she unfolded the details of her story. “I hope you do not for a moment imagine that all this which you have just told me can make a shadow’s difference in my love for you,” he eagerly began almost before the last words had left her lips. “But I have still another confession to make,” she said, breathing the words, as it were, on the wings of a sigh. “Let me finish, please, before you say anything more.” Then came the confession which the truth that dwelt in her forced from her lips, although it was like tearing her heart to have to make it. “Mr. Lisle, I have been engaged once already.” “Ah!”—with a swift indrawing of his breath. It was undoubtedly a stab. “I was young, inexperienced, romantic,” resumed Ethel, not allowing herself to notice his exclamation. “He was good-looking and plausible, and he persuaded me into fancying that I loved him, and after a time we became engaged. But, indeed, it was all a foolish fancy, for in my heart I never really cared for him. Fortunately I discovered the sort of man he was before it was too late. He had sought me in the belief that I was an heiress, and when he found I was nothing of the kind, his only thought was in what way he could most readily break with me. But no such action on his part was called for, for meanwhile it had come to my knowledge that he was already engaged to someone else, to whom he had behaved with a baseness and a heartlessness which seem almost beyond belief. From that moment all was at an end between us. I felt like a prisoner when his fetters are struck off and he is told that he is free. How deep was my thankfulness that my eyes had been mercifully opened in time, I alone can ever know.”