"Will you answer one question?" said the doctor, looking earnestly at the young man.
"Anything which you may ask," quickly returned the other.
"Did you ever have any other sweetheart than Miss Staples? Did any other woman ever love you in the past?"
For a moment Jack hesitated, and his fair, handsome face flushed; then he frankly raised his eyes and met the keen gaze fixed upon him.
"I have no hesitancy in acknowledging that I did have a romance in my life before my betrothal to poor Jessie. But she knew about it from beginning to end."
"Did you give this girl up for Miss Staples? Pardon me for asking such a direct question, but your answer is vitally important."
The handsome face into which the old doctor gazed grew very white, and the lines about the firm mouth deepened into an expression of pain.
"My little sweetheart disappeared one day with a handsomer man than I," he said, huskily, "and from that time to this I have never looked upon her false but fair face."
"Did she love you in those days?" was the next query.
"I wonder that you can ask the question," said Jack, with a touch of haughty bitterness. "Does it look very much as though she loved me when she ran away with another man? On the contrary, any one could see that, in pursuing the course she did toward me, she must have detested me. I never saw this Mrs. Brown before we engaged her as a companion to my mother, nor has Jessie, I am sure. I am completely at sea," Jack added, "and therefore I leave the matter entirely with you. If Jessie is dying of slow poison, I beseech you to discover the perpetrator of the deed, at any cost—aye, and though it takes every dollar of my fortune, the wretch shall be punished to the full extent of the law."