Alas, poor little Jessie, surrounded by cruel plotters and a jealous foe, it might have been better if she had died in the heavy sleep that lulled her senses that dreary night rather than awaken to the sorrow of the next day. When she sighed and opened her heavy-lidded eyes again, the fortune teller stood by the bed, looking down at her with a penetrating gaze. “Ah, what a long sleep you’ve had, child. Do you feel better?” she asked. “Better!” cried Jessie, then a wave of memory swept over her, and she moaned, “Oh, how terrible it was! How came I here? And he--oh, where is he?” Madame took her hand and answered solemnly: “You may well ask, where is he? Poor child, how can I tell you the dreadful truth? But you will have to bear it. He--poor Frank Laurier--was killed stone-dead!” A shriek rang through the room--long, loud, heart-rending!--then Jessie lay like one dead before the heartless woman. Madame Barto would never forget that day. Jessie Lyndon’s grief for Frank Laurier when she recovered from her long swoon was indeed heart-rending. In vain madame expostulated: “Why should you take on so? You never saw him till yesterday!” “Oh, I cannot understand it, but I know that he was as dear to me as if I had known him a year!” “A young girl must not give her heart unsought.” “Oh, madame, I did not. Oh, my heart!” The girl flung herself back on the pillows in an agony of grieving that strangled words on her lips, and it was hours later when she asked plaintively: “Where have they taken him?” Madame answered soothingly: “Two lady friends of his were in the park when he was killed--Mrs. Dalrymple and Miss Ellyson of Fifth Avenue--and they had him conveyed to their home.” Jessie instantly remembered the ladies she had seen in the victoria, especially the dark, brilliant beauty who had frowned at her so blackly. She gasped faintly: “Oh, I must see him once more before he is hidden from me forever in the cold, dark grave!” “Impossible!” cried madame sternly, and though the half-distraught girl knelt to her in an agony of entreaty, she still refused her prayer. Indeed, she could do no less, seeing what a falsehood she had told. Then Jessie grew angry and desperate. “You are wicked and heartless to tell me I cannot see him once before he is buried! I defy you! I will go!” she cried, with a passion of which madame had not believed her capable. The dark, dreamy eyes flashed defiance out of the deadly, pale face, alarming Madame Barto so that she snatched up Jessie’s clothing and bore them away in triumph, exclaiming: “There, now, I don’t think you will run off to Fifth Avenue in your nightgown, miss!” And, locking the door on the outside, she left the poor girl to her fate, forgetting that in Jessie’s closet there still remained hanging the cheap, threadbare garments she had worn when she came.