"My God!" he uttered, and his eyes roved from the fair face in the picture to that of the still unconscious girl. Something in the strange likeness of the two affected him terribly. "Can it be?" he said, aloud; and as if he had asked her a question, the white lids of Jaquelina fluttered upward, and she fixed her dark eyes upon him. Then she saw that he held her treasured locket open in his hand, and a gleam of anger flashed from her eyes. "How dare you?" she cried, trying to wrench it from him. But the outlaw caught the weak little hands and held them tightly. "Girl," he said, hoarsely, "tell me whose faces are these you wear upon your breast?" Something in his strong, repressed agitation forced a reply from Jaquelina's pale lips. "They are those of my father and mother," she replied, wonderingly. "Your mother's maiden name?" he asked, fixing his dark, magnetic eyes upon her face. And again some power that seemed beyond her own volition, held her passionate anger in abeyance, and forced her to reply, quietly: "_Jaqueline Ardelle._" The man started--a groan of agony forced itself between his bloodless, pain-drawn lips. "For God's sake, I ask you, for God's sake, tell me all you know of your mother," he exclaimed, in low, tense accents, while his black eyes seemed to burn with inward fire. "I know very little to tell you," she said, with increasing wonder at his fearful agitation, for great drops of dew beaded his high, white brow. "I have told you her name was Jaqueline Ardelle. My father married her in the south of France. He was an artist, and fell in love with her beauty. He brought her home with him, and when I was born she died." "And this was her hair--her ring--her locket?" he said, as she paused, and then Jaquelina saw for the first time that he had taken her mother's ring from her finger. She reached out her hand for it as she said, sadly: "Yes, that was her ring and her locket, and that was a curl they cut off for papa after she was dead. And this dress I have on now was my mother's wedding-dress." There was a pause. The dark eyes of the outlaw were fixed on the curl in his hand. Its silken tendrils seemed to twine about his hand caressingly. "Give me the curl. I will put it back in the locket," said the girl, rising abruptly to a sitting posture. "No--no," the outlaw murmured, dreamily, like one talking in his sleep. "Give it to me," Jaquelina repeated, half angrily. "It is mine--mine." Then Gerald Huntington sprang to his feet, and towered above her in his princely hight and satanic beauty. His face was livid, his eyes flashed fire. He threw the silken curl into her lap with a muttered curse.