Walter's dim eyes flashed wide open, full of eager joy. "Lina!" he exclaimed, incredulously. "I mean it!" she whispered, gently. "Try to live, Walter, and as soon as I can be relieved of those galling fetters that bind me I will be your own. I will be as generous as you are. You were willing to give me your life--now I will give you mine." "Lina, I must not accept such a sacrifice from you," he whispered, almost too weak to refuse the promise she gave so unselfishly. But Lina murmured with a sad, pretty attempt at archness: "You must not refuse a lady's hand when she offers it to you herself, Mr. Earle." Walter's face was radiant with joy and hope as he pressed her hand and whispered: "If I accept it, Lina, it is not through selfishness, but because if I live I believe that my great love cannot fail in time to make you happy." "May God spare your life, Walter," she whispered from the depths of her grateful, generous heart. Then, as she turned her head aside quickly to hide the pain that came into her face at the thought of that other dearer love that might have made her life so fair, she suddenly encountered Ronald Valchester's eyes looking straight into her own. There was in that straining gaze a look of dumb and hopeless agony that Jaquelina never forgot to her dying day. The beautiful, blue-gray eyes that expressed, as eyes of another color never can, the lights and shades of feeling, were fixed on hers with a yearning pathos that went straight to her heart. Then Ronald turned quickly and went from the room. It was all in a moment. Walter had taken no notice. With his glad eyes fixed on Jaquelina's face he was praying silently that his life might be spared to him. * * * * * When Jaquelina was leaving, almost an hour later, she found Ronald Valchester waiting on the pavement to hand her to her carriage. When she was seated, he held her hand a moment in his own and bent forward to speak to her. "Lina," he said, hurriedly, "I meant to go south to-day as you wish me, but that will be impossible now. I cannot desert Walter. He is my dearest friend, and when I was wounded three years ago he nursed me like a brother. Can you endure my presence a little longer?" "I _must_ bear it--as I have done many things," she said, with her white hand on her heart. "You must not forsake your friend." Then she lifted her haunting, dark eyes to his face. "Ronald, you are not angry with me," she said, wistfully. "Walter has loved me through long years. And I could never be yours, you know." He shook his head with white, pain-drawn lips. "And Violet?" she said to him, questioningly. "I spoke to her--a little while ago," he said. "It was only because _you_ wished it, Lina. She will be my wife." He felt, rather than saw the shiver that ran over the slender form of the _prima donna_.