"I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Earle," she replied, and gave him her hand in a perfectly frank, unembarrassed way. Walter pressed it a moment with a quickened heart-beat, and then they sat down. He congratulated her on her brilliant career. "You must tell me how it all came about," he said. "We all believed you dead. It seemed as if the earth must have opened and swallowed you that morning, when I left you at the park gates." "I wish it had!" she cried, involuntarily, and a look of pain came over the eager, handsome face of the listener. "Were you so unhappy, Lina?" he asked, sadly. The white hands clasped each other tightly, and tears came into the sad, dark eyes, as she lifted them to Walter's face. "I was wretched," she replied. "It seemed to me that my heart was broken." "But you were not so desperate as I feared," he said. "For when you disappeared so strangely, and we could hear nothing of your fate, I was always afraid that you had drowned yourself." "I was not quite so reckless, nor so romantic," said Jaquelina, with a slight air of surprise; "I was very anxious to get away from myself, but as that was impossible, I did the next best thing that occurred to me. I simply ran away from the scenes and associations which it was beyond my strength to endure any longer." "You must have taken infinite pains to hide every trace of your flight," he said. "No one saw or heard anything of you after I parted from you." "That is not so strange when you remember how early it was, and what a wet and chilly morning," replied Jaquelina, quietly. "I am almost sure I did not meet a single person on the road, but I went straight home. My uncle and aunt were very early risers, you know. They were both out of the house--uncle in the field, and his wife at the milking, I supposed. I went up-stairs to my room, donned a traveling suit, and, taking a small bag in my hand, left the house unobserved. I walked to the station and took an early train for Staunton." "You had friends there?" said Walter, deeply interested in her quiet story. "Only Professor Larue--my old music-teacher--and his wife," she replied. "I went to them quite sure of a welcome. They had always predicted great things of me," she added, with the deep color rushing to her cheeks. "You have been with them always then?" he asked. "Always," she replied. "They have supplied the place of the parents I never knew. I owe them everything." "God bless them," said Walter, fervently. "I shall always love them because they were kind to you in your sorrow, Lina." He could not help calling her Lina. He did not like the sound of her stage name, and "Miss Meredith" seemed so cold and formal in this moment when they had been parted so long. She did not seem to care. She looked at him now, and answered quietly: