. I also have my pride, Mr.
Jelnik!"

The hauteur went out of his face, and something sweet and quizzical
and boyish flooded it.

"Keep Hynds House, dear, dear Donna Quixotta," said he, gently. "You
have given me something I needed a thousand times more."

Now, although we had not found the jewels, we had found Jessamine
Hynds, and there remained to be done a thing that called for what
strength of will and courage we possessed. And we had need to make
haste. Already more time had been consumed than we bargained for.

Mr. Jelnik fetched a deep breath, and went over to the Thing in the
chair. There was in his manner neither repugnance nor horror,
nothing but an almost divine compassion. Never, never, had I
respected the courage, the honor, the mercy of man so greatly as I
did then.

It was a ghastly task; I do not like to remember it. In the hot, dry
air of the room without windows she had become, not a bleached
skeleton, but a shriveled, fleshless, blackened mummy. The hair
still clung tightly to the skull, the discolored skin was stretched
over the bony contour of the face; the lips had shriveled away from
the teeth, which showed in a sort of jeering grin. And--well, we had
to tie her hair, like a rope, around her chest and arms; and I tore
the ruffles off my petticoat, to tie her skirts at the knees and
ankles.

The brown frock was low-necked and short-sleeved, too. And the
picture of her, down-stairs, showed her with so red a lip, so round
an arm, so soft, so white a bosom!

Thou might'st think thou hadst drunk the water of Paradise
who had tasted the nectar of her lip.... The ends of her
ringlets fell into the hand like as the sleeve of the
generous in the hand of the needy.

Oh, Jessamine!

She had been so splendidly tall a woman, that as he held her grisly
head upon his shoulder the little shoes that rattled upon her
shriveled feet were well below his knees. One great rope of her
blue-black hair escaped and fell down the back of his white
coat, and as he moved it moved, too, with a lazy and languid
coquettishness horribly travesting youth and beauty. It was such
wonderful hair! Small wonder young Richard had praised its dark
splendor, and kissed its shining folds to his undoing!

"Jessamine," Nicholas Jelnik said as he bent over her, "you shall
have your chance to rest. You shall sleep under the open sky. Nature
shall have you, Jessamine, and make you over into something of
lovel