all that you have so faithfully essayed to
accomplish in my behalf, I ask you now to forget everything but my
gratitude for your effort to save me; and I offer my hand to you, as
the one friend who sacrificed even his manly pride, and endured
humiliation in order to redress my wrongs. I thank you very sincerely,
Mr. Dunbar."

He took her outstretched hand, pressed it against his cheek, his eyes,
held it to his lips; then a half smothered groan escaped him, and
afraid to trust himself, he went quickly out.

Believing that she stood on the confines of another world, she had
possessed her soul in patience, waiting for the consummation of the
sacrifice; yet at the crisis of her fate, that singular,
incomprehensible influence, long resisted, drew her thoughts to him,
whom she regarded as the chosen puppet of destiny to hurry her into an
untimely grave. She had fought the battle with him, under fearful odds;
conscious of sedition in the heart that defied him, warily clutching
with one hand the throat of rebellion in her citadel, while with the
other, she parried assault.

Keeping lonely vigil, amid the strewn wreck of life and hope, she had
waved away one persistent thought, that lit up the blackness with a
sudden glory, that came with the face of an angel of light, and babbled
with the silvery tongue of sorcery. As far as her future was concerned,
this world had practically come to a premature end; but above the roar
of ruin, and out of the yawning graves of slaughtered possibilities,
rose and rang the challenge: If she had never come South, if she could
have been allowed the chance of happiness that seemed every woman's
birthright, if she had met and known Mr. Dunbar, before he was pledged
to another; what then? If she were once more the Beryl of old, and he
were free? If? What necromancy so wonderful, as the potentiality of if?
Weighed in that popular balance--appearances--how stood the poor
friendless prisoner, loaded with suspicion, tarnished with obloquy, on
the verge of an ignominious death; in comparison with the fair, proud
heiress, dowered with blue blood, powerful in patrician influence, rich
in all that made her the envy of her social world?

In the dazzling zenith of temporal prosperity, Leo Gordon considered
the heart of her betrothed her most precious possession; the one jewel
which she would gladly have given all else to preserve; and yet, fate
tore it from her grasp, and laid it at the feet, nay thrust it