"No," the girl said, decidedly, with her curly head set sidewise, and such an owlish gravity about her that the outlaw chief, who seemed "to be all things by turns, and nothing long," felt his risibilities excited, and laughed outright. "Why do you laugh?" she inquired, with an air of offended dignity. "I beg your pardon, Miss Meredith, for my rudeness," he said, "but as you stood there with the steam from your drenched clothing rising over your head, and the furnace blazing at your feet, you reminded me so comically of one of Shakespeare's witches that I was forced to laugh." Jaquelina was thoroughly angry. To be laughed at by this man whom she scorned, was too much. She stepped back into the darkest and coldest corner of the room, and stood there in silent, dignified displeasure. "Pray do not allow my silly jest to drive you away from the fire," he exclaimed, anxiously. "Let me entreat you to return." But his captive had sunk down upon the floor, and buried her face in her hands. Folding his arms across his breast, the outlaw chief walked up and down across the soft, echoless carpet, his gloomy eyes fixed immovably upon the little crouching figure with the graceful head bowed on the clasped hands. Jaquelina looked very childish and forlorn as she crouched there. Quite suddenly she broke into a perfectly audible sob of grief and self-pity. "I shall miss Violet Earle's party after all. And I had been so happy over it!" It was the cry of a child over a broken toy, yet its artless pathos pierced the man's heart. He went quickly and knelt down beside her. "Little one, what is this that you grieve for?" he asked, almost tenderly; "tell me?" "It is only--only," sobbed the girl, "that you will cause me to lose the happiest hour of my life." "Poor child! and life has so few happy hours," said the outlaw chief. "Tell me what it is you lament so much. Perhaps I may relent." "It was Miss Violet Earle's lawn-party to-morrow night," sobbed Jaquelina. "She had invited me. I--I was never at a party in my life, and I wanted so much to see what it was like." The listener frowned, then smiled beneath his concealing mask. "Do not weep for that," he said. "I will tell you what every party is like, little girl. A party is an occasion when somebody else has a prettier dress than yours, and somebody else dances with your favorite beau once more than you did, and when you get home you are mad, and say you wouldn't have gone if you had known it, so there!" "I don't believe it," wept Jaquelina, obstinately, "at least, not all of it. It may be true about the dress. I _know_ Violet Earle's will be _ever so much_ prettier than mine, but I should never, never wish I had not gone there." Ah, Jaquelina, Jaquelina! If those dark eyes, dimmed now with childish tears, could but have pierced the secret of the untried future!