"I was very young and foolish in those days," said Queenie, with a sigh. "I do not suppose that any girl ever lived more silly and romantic than I was. I brooded day and night over the mysterious donor of the fan and flowers. All my secret thoughts were of him. I felt quite sure in my own mind that the handsome man who had looked at me so admiringly in the fancy store was my unknown admirer. I expected daily to meet him somewhere in the haunts of the gay society in which I had become somewhat of a belle. You remember, Sydney?" Sydney did not answer, and she went on, slowly: "I did not meet him in society; but after a time we met in a public park. I was walking there alone. I slipped and fell, spraining my ankle severely. A gentleman rushed to my assistance. It was the handsome stranger of whom I had dreamed so much that I had become perfectly infatuated with him. He placed me in a carriage and took me home. You were all out that day, and I never told of that event in my life through some undefined fear of censure. That was where my fault began--in that first act of secrecy." She paused a moment, and a heart-wrung sigh drifted over her pale and quivering lips. Sydney sat perfectly still, regarding her with stern, unpitying eyes, as though they were strangers instead of sisters whom the same mother had nursed on her breast. "We met again and again," said Queenie, slowly. "Always by accident, it seemed at first, Sydney, and I am quite sure it _was_ accident on my part; but I know now that it was by design on the part of Mr. Vinton. He wooed me in the most romantic fashion. Flowers and poetry were the vehicles through which he conveyed his sentiments, until at last grown bolder, he openly avowed his love for me." "You must have been very forward to have encouraged him to a declaration so soon," said Sydney, with a sneer. "Sydney, I declare to you I was not. Oh! if you knew Leon Vinton as I do now, you would know that I was not--you would know that the more timid and shrinking the dove the more fierce and unrelenting would be his pursuit," exclaimed Queenie, with a scarlet blush at her sister's cruel charge.