Her white hands trembled with pleasure; her young heart beat high with love and rapture. She had thrown off the incubus of dread since Ronald's reassuring words last night; yet a sudden, swift memory caused her, as she rose, to glance quickly around her, and then to gather up her flowers and fly along the path back to the house. As she hurried up to her own room she suddenly remembered Mrs. Meredith's injunction, and ran back to her door, where she tapped lightly. It was opened by her aunt, who held a small package in her hand, and spoke thickly, with her mouth full of hairpins. "A black man brought this here, and said it was a bridal-present for you," Lina understood her to say. She took the package and went on to Mrs. Valchester. She emptied her lapful of flowers on the toilet-table and held up the package with a smile. "Some one has sent me a bridal-gift," she laughed. "Don't stop to examine it now, my dear," said Mrs. Valchester. "We have no time to lose. Sit down here by me, and let us tie the pansies into pretty little bunches." Jaquelina sat down obediently, and Mrs. Valchester said: "I will tell you a secret, Lina. Ronald went to New York last week and purchased an exquisite set of jewelry--diamonds and large, pale pearls--for your bridal-gift. Do you like jewels?" "Very much," said Lina; "but I have never possessed any except mamma's few trinkets and the engagement-ring that Ronald gave me." "Ronald does not mean to give you the jewels till after the wedding," said Ronald's adoring mother. "He has a poetic fancy for you to wear just the same things you wore when he first met you. Of course, that would never do in a fashionable place, but here in the country it does not matter so much to give him his way. Ronald is very fanciful and poetic. He is about to publish a volume of poems. I am sure they must succeed. Some of them are quite Byronic." So Ronald's fond mother rambled on to his bride-elect, while with her own white, jeweled fingers she adjusted the beautiful veil on the girl's graceful head; confining it with knots of velvety white pansies. When she said, quite proudly: "You are finished, and you make a really beautiful bride, my dear," Lina's heart gave a throb of rapture at the praise of her betrothed's mother. "I may open the package now?" she said, timidly, to the stately old lady in her silver-gray silk and real laces and soft puffs of gray hair. "Yes," replied Mrs. Valchester, "for I suppose you are impatient to see what token of kindness one of your friends has sent to you." Jaquelina removed the wrappings and found a small painting, exquisitely framed in ebony and silver. The painting represented a serpent crushing a dove. Beneath it was written, in a fine, clear, feminine hand the one word: "Vendetta." Mrs. Valchester looked over Lina's shoulder at the strange bridal-gift. "Lina," she said, gravely, "it is not a friend who has sent you this; it is an enemy." "Oh, how cruel!" said the girl.