ed. "May
angels be your companions through the dark watches, and bring you to
a glorious morning!"

He left her, and moved towards the door; yet lingered, for his mind
was not wholly at ease in regard to the state of Jessie's feelings.
She had not repelled him in any way--but his ardent words and acts
were too passively received. She was standing where he had parted
from her, with her eyes upon the floor.

"Jessie!"

She looked up.

"Good night, dear!"

"Good night, Mr. Dexter."

"Mr. Dexter!" The young man repeated the words between his teeth, as
he passed into the street a moment afterwards. "Mr. Dexter! and in
tones that were cold as an icicle!"

He strode away from the house of Mrs. Loring, but little comforted
by his interview with Jessie, and with the fiend Jealousy a
permanent guest in his heart.

CHAPTER X.

LEON DEXTER was not wrong in his suspicions. It was Hendrickson who
visited Miss Loring on the evening of his interview with Mrs.
Denison. The young man had striven, with all the power he possessed,
to overcome his fruitless passion--but striven in vain.--The image
of Miss Loring had burned itself into his heart, and become
ineffaceable. The impression she had made upon him was different
from that made by any woman he had yet chanced to meet, and he felt
that, in some mysterious way, their destinies were bound up
together. That, in her heart, she preferred him to the man who was
about to sacrifice her at the marriage altar he no longer doubted.

"Is it right to permit this sacrifice?" The question had thrust
itself upon him for days and weeks.

"Leon Dexter cannot fill the desire of her heart." Thus he talked
with himself. "She does not love; and to such a woman marriage
unblessed by love must be a condition worse than death. No--no! It
shall not be! Steadily she is moving on, nerved by a false sense of
honor; and unless some one comes to the rescue, the fatal vow will
be made that seals the doom of her happiness and mine. It must
not--shall not be! Who so fitting as I to be her rescuer? She loves
me! Eyes, lips, countenance, tones, gestures, all have been my
witnesses. Only an hour too late! Too late? No--no! I will not
believe the words! She shall yet be mine!"

It was in this spirit, and under the pressure of such feelings, that
Paul Hendrickson visited Jessie Loring on the night Dexter saw him
enter the house. The interview was not a very long one, as the
reader knows. He sent