“Do not look so frightened, Gipsy Darke, I am not going to hurt you. I am glad to see you alive and well!” cried the arch hypocrite eagerly, and she continued in a low voice: “Oh, indeed, I did not mean to hurt you much when I struck you that night! I was just trying to frighten you into giving up my ring! It made me bitter and jealous to see you wearing it so proudly, don’t you understand?” “Oh, yes, yes, I understand!” faltered the girl, who knew in secret all the pains of hopeless love. Suddenly Lelia threw herself dramatically on her knees by the couch. “See, I kneel to you!” she cried appealingly. “Do you know why? It is to beg you to keep my secret, Gipsy Darke, the secret of the stolen ring and the cruel blow! Oh, I do not deserve your kindness, I have been hard and cruel to you in the past; but I repent it all now, I will be your truest friend in future if you will keep my miserable secret! They have told you, have they not, that you are the heiress of the Willoughby money? You have triumphed over me in everything, and I have nothing left to me but Laurie’s love! Oh, do not rob me of that, Gipsy, do not break his heart as well as my own by betraying my terrible secret! Oh, answer quickly and give me your promise of silence now, or it will be too late, for Laurie and his father are coming in a moment to identify you! Oh, remember I am his wife and he loves me madly! Do not turn his heart against me now!” CHAPTER XXXIV. THE VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN. If any one had told Lelia a month ago that to-day she would be kneeling to the girl she then despised, imploring her pity and her mercy, she would have been too angry for words, she would simply have laughed it to scorn. Yet she was here on her knees, with clasped hands and burning tears, imploring Rosalind Whitney, the beautiful heiress, to keep her terrible secret so that she might hold her husband’s love. No one but Lelia could have had the effrontery to expect or hope for pardon from one so deeply wronged. From her early childhood until now she had wronged and persecuted the lonely waif until her hatred grew to murderous intensity. Now the tables were turned upon the heartless Lelia. Gipsy Darke, the waif, had passed into history. In her place behold Rosalind Whitney, heiress, with the balance of power in her hands. Yet there was neither pride nor happiness on the pale, lovely face with its dark, brilliant eyes, that rested so searchingly on the suppliant’s face. “Speak, I pray you, Gipsy, for my happiness is in your hands. Mine and Laurie’s, too, for it would break his heart to know the lengths to which jealous anger drove me that fatal night. See, see, they come!” and drawing aside the curtain before the door, she showed her General Willoughby and his son advancing with the gipsy. But a moment remained in which to grant the grace that Lelia craved. The dark and the blue eyes looked fixedly into each other, and Lelia entreated: