"Would to God I could awaken! For I dream I know not how, And my soul is sorely shaken Lest an evil step be taken-- Lest the dead who is forsaken May not be happy now!" Almost without his own volition, and perhaps partly inspired by the strain of half-sad music that floated out from the ball-room, these often-recurring thoughts came to him again, and, wrapped in their pain and pathos, he forgot the flight of time until he saw Jewel coming back to him alone, with such a pale, drawn face that he started in wonder. "My dear, what is it? You look as if you had seen a ghost!" he exclaimed. She fell wearily into the seat by his side, and answered, in a low, strained voice: "Oh, Laurie, I have had a great shock!" He could well believe her, for she was trembling violently; her face, and even her lips were ghastly pale, and her eyes had a startled expression in their dark, liquid depths. No one was near, and he took her hand and pressed it gently, murmuring something suitable to the occasion in his tender solicitude. He was rewarded by a faint, sweet smile and look of adoration from her dark eyes. "Perhaps you will think me foolish," she said--"perhaps you will not see any resemblance at all. It was only that both had the same eyes and hair; but I was so startled! I--I feared you would be shocked, too, so I hurried back to tell you--to warn you!" "Jewel, whom are you talking about? I do not understand you," her lover said, with a gleam of wonder in his grave, brown eyes. She answered with a palpable reluctance, yet as if compelled to the confession: "Of Miss Brooke, the English beauty. She is very beautiful--a blonde, with the brightest golden hair, and eyes with the purple-blue of wet violets. And, oh, Laurie, she looked so much like--like Flower, that I was frightened. But," growing braver, "of course, there was nothing in it to frighten me, only I was taken by surprise. There are plenty of striking resemblances in the world." Her jealous eyes saw his handsome face whiten with emotion. He said, in a strange, agitated voice: "Why do you say there could be nothing in it? No one could be quite sure that Flower drowned herself. It was only suspicion. No one saw her commit suicide. And her body was never recovered." "Oh, Laurie, what nonsense! I told you she had vowed to drown herself, that I watched her all the time to prevent her from carrying out her threat; but that night when she got away, I went immediately to the shore, and there I found her shawl. What further proof could one need after what she had threatened so often? Besides, she was never seen nor heard of afterward. Some one must have heard of her if she had not been dead!" "There was that strange dream of the mulatto, Sam, you know," he answered. "Sam--a drunken fool!" said Jewel, with compressed lips and flashing eyes. "His wife denied every word of it. She was a clever, truthful woman."