“Then this is what I ask you, Charley, dear--yes, still dear, despite the wound in my heart. Keep our secret until you have your new love’s acceptance of your suit. Let us remain to the world lovers still, until you are plighted to another. Then I will release you from your vow.” “It shall be as you say,” he answered, so grateful for her promise of release, that he did not think it mattered going on with the farce of an engagement a while longer. “If it will make it any less painful for you, Rose, you can say you jilted me, you know. I shouldn’t mind at all!” “Thank you--I will think it over,” she answered dejectedly, and the last glimpse he had of her was just as she hid her face in her hands again and sat silent, like a statue of despair. He went immediately down to the keeper’s cottage, as he did every day, for news of Berry, and his heart leaped with joy when Mrs. Cline told him there was a marked change for the better, and the invalid had begun to take notice and to try to talk a little. “When the doctor came this morning he was so pleased with the improvement, he said she was quite sure to get well now,” she said. “Thank Heaven!” he cried fervently, and after a momentary hesitation, he added earnestly: “Mrs. Cline, do me one favor, and I will never forget it. If that fellow, Weston, comes to see her again, do not admit him to see the patient. Tell him she is improving, but can see no one.” “I’ll do as you say, sir, but Lor’ bless you, some of them actor folks comes here every day to ask about her.” “But remember, I wish to be the first one admitted to her presence when she is able to see any one,” he replied. CHAPTER XXI. THE HAPPY MEETING. But April had succeeded March before Berry was fairly convalescent. A long and weary month she had lain upon that bed of pain before life struggled back for certain into her weary, battered frame, and the light of memory shone again in her big, pathetic brown eyes. Then she began to get well very fast, and to betray a great curiosity over everything, asking questions that the doctor said might be freely answered. So before she was permitted to see any one but her nurses, she knew all there was to tell--that Charley Bonair, the millionaire senator’s only son, had rescued her from Bruin’s clutches at the peril of his own life, and that the mysterious assailant had put a ball in his shoulder as he bent over her in the pit. “Do not tell me he was killed,” sobbed Berry. Mrs. Cline laughed reassuringly.