"Lina, did I tell you too suddenly?" he exclaimed, chafing the limp and nerveless hands. "Forgive me, I forgot how weak and nervous you must be yet." It was a shock to her, there could be no doubt of that. She lay silent several minutes, her heart throbbing quick and fast. It was some little while before she could speak. When she did, she uttered only one word through pale lips: "When?" "Almost a week ago now," he replied. "Are you strong enough for me to tell you about it, Lina?" "Yes," she replied, and he drew a chair to her side. "Will you suffer me to hold your hand while I am telling you, Lina?" he inquired, fondly. She seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, then she answered, with a slight flush: "No; I would rather you should not do so." A troubled look came into the blue-gray eyes a moment as they rested on the leaping flames of the fire; then he said, with apparent composure: "You knew I had been in New York for two weeks, Lina?" "No, I did not know it," she replied, surprised. "True, how should you know it?" he said, half to himself. "Well, I was, and last week Professor Larue called on me at my hotel." "The dear old soul! I hope he was well," exclaimed Jaquelina, warmly. "Yes, he was well," said Ronald Valchester, "and very impatient for your return to New York. A dying man had sent for you, and when he found that you were out of reach he called for me." "You went?" said Lina, looking at him with wide, dark eyes. "Yes, Lina. Judge of my surprise when, in an obscure and comfortless abode in the suburbs of Brooklyn, I found the handsome outlaw, Gerald Huntington, stretched upon his dying bed." "Dying!" Jaquelina repeated after him, with something like awe in her low voice. "Yes, dying, but dying ashamed and repentant. There was a priest with him. He passed away peacefully." "And he sent for me?" the girl said, wonderingly. "Yes, he sent for you, and he was very much disappointed and grieved that you were too far away to come in time. He wished to ask your forgiveness for the cowardly revenge he took upon you for the ill-turn you did him once." "I have been so sorry for it," she said, weakly, and blushing crimson. "I was so young and untutored I did not think. It was all because I needed the money so much. If I could have seen him on his dying bed I would have asked him to forgive me my sin of ingratitude, and I must have forgiven him for the revenge he took. I could not have refused to forgive him when he was dying." "Yes, I told him that," said Ronald. "I understood you so well, Lina, I knew just what you would say and feel. I told him to rest quite easy about that." Lina thanked him with a grateful glance, quickly withdrawn. "He had sinned against you, too," she said, tremulously. "That dreadful wound! You forgave him, Ronald?" "Freely," he replied; and then they were silent a moment, and Lina looked at the softly falling snow through the windows, and Ronald looked at her steadily and gravely.