“I should like to see the vial and determine the nature of the poison,” said Doctor Julian gravely, and he was keenly disappointed when Cora Ellyson confessed that she had inadvertently trod on it and crushed it, so that she had to call a servant to remove the fragments. “That is very unfortunate, as a knowledge of the poison taken would have materially assisted in finding the antidote,” he said, and the servant was quickly summoned by his mistress to bring back the fragments. The answer was that they had been consumed in the kitchen range. Directly afterward the girl’s stiffening body was brought in and laid down upon the floor before their eyes--a hapless sight that wrung anguished groans from Frank Laurier’s lips, though his proud sweetheart looked on coldly and unmoved, perhaps secretly glad in her heart of this calamity. One glance at the pale, cold face in its frame of wet, disheveled gold, and the physician said sadly: “Poor child, I can do nothing. She is already dead!” “Oh, no, no, no, do not say such dreadful words! She must not die!” sobbed Mrs. Dalrymple, giving way to wild emotion as she knelt by Jessie, tore open her gown, and felt eagerly for the heart. “Oh, Doctor Julian, feel here! Is not there some slight pulsation?” hopefully. “Not the faintest, my dear madam. The deadly potion did its work quickly. The lovely girl is dead! Ah, how remarkable!” bending with a start to examine a mark on the young girl’s breast where it was exposed by the open gown. Doctor Julian was an old man, the family physician, and he added surprisedly: “See that red cross on her breast! It is precisely similar to your family birthmark, and if I mistake not, you have one like it yourself!” “Precisely similar, doctor, and on the same spot--oh, Heaven, how strange this seems! My lost child--so cruelly stolen from me ere I had given her any name but darling--had the same mark! What if--what if---- Oh, my brain reels with wild suspicion. Could it be----” “Calm yourself, my dear madam. This may be but a coincidence! However, it ought to be investigated to-morrow.” “It shall be,” she sobbed, then started as Cora Ellyson cried impatiently: “Are you going to leave that dead girl lying there all night? I declare I shall faint if she is not removed!” “Cora!” expostulated her lover; but she shrugged her shoulders haughtily. Doctor Julian glanced at her in surprise, then said gently, to Mrs. Dalrymple: “What disposition will be made of the poor girl’s body?” “It shall remain in my care, doctor, and the funeral shall be in my charge from this house, and at my own expense,” she sobbed. Cora Ellyson started forward indignantly, crying: “Dear aunt, you surely forget that my wedding is the third day from now. The girl shall not be buried from here. It would be unseemly amid wedding gayeties!” “The wedding must be postponed!” the proud woman sighed, lifting Jessie’s cold little hand and pressing her lips upon it.