rk. She came
down in the afternoon clad as I had never seen her before. She wore one
of her Boston dresses and she looked superb in it. From the crown of her
head to the sole of her foot, she dazzled like a moving picture; but she
lacked one adornment; there was no ring on her finger. 'Jacqueline!'
cried I, 'you have forgotten something.' And I pointed towards her hand.

"She glanced at it, blushed a trifle as I thought, and pulled it out of
her pocket. 'I have it,' said she, 'but it is too large,' and she thrust
it carelessly back.

"At three o'clock the train came in. Then I saw her eye flash and her
lip burn. In a few minutes later two gentlemen appeared at the gate.

"'Mr. Holt and his brother!' were the words I heard whispered through
the house. But I did not need that announcement to understand Jacqueline
at last."

XXVI.

A MAN'S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN'S MERCY.

"Fair is foul and foul is fair."

--MACBETH.

"Have you ever seen a man whose instantaneous effect upon you was
electrical; in whose expression, carriage, or manner, there was
concealed a charm that attracted and interested you, apart from his
actual worth and beauty? Such a one was Mr. Roger Holt, the gentleman I
now discerned entering the gate with Jacqueline's lover. It was not that
he was handsome. He could not for one moment bear any comparison with
his brother in substantial attraction, and yet when they were both in
the room, you looked at him in preference to the other, and was vexed
with yourself for doing so. He seemed to be the younger as he was
certainly the smaller; yet he took the lead, even in coming up the walk.
Why had he not taken it in the deeper and more important matter? Was it
because he did not love her?

"I was not present when Jacqueline greeted her guests and presented Mr.
Roger Holt to her father. But later in the day I spent a half hour with
them and saw enough to be able to satisfy myself as to the falsity of my
last supposition. Never had I seen on a human countenance the evidences
of a wilder passion than that which informed his features, as he sat in
the further window of the parlor, presumably engaged in admiring the
autumn landscape, but really occupied in casting short side-long glances
at Jacqueline, who sat listening with a superb nonchalence, but with a
restless gleam in her wandering eye, to the genial talk between her
acknowledged lover and the Colonel. I half feared he would rise from his