But Lina murmured with a sad, pretty attempt at archness:
"You must not refuse a lady's hand when she offers it to you herself, Mr. Earle."
Walter's face was radiant with joy and hope as he pressed her hand and whispered:
"If I accept it, Lina, it is not through selfishness, but because if I live I believe that my great love cannot fail in time to make you happy."
"May God spare your life, Walter," she whispered from the depths of her grateful, generous heart.
Then, as she turned her head aside quickly to hide the pain that came into her face at the thought of that other dearer love that might have made her life so fair, she suddenly encountered Ronald Valchester's eyes looking straight into her own.
There was in that straining gaze a look of dumb and hopeless agony that Jaquelina never forgot to her dying day. The beautiful, blue-gray eyes that expressed, as eyes of another color never can, the lights and shades of feeling, were fixed on hers with a yearning pathos that went straight to her heart.
Then Ronald turned quickly and went from the room. It was all in a moment. Walter had taken no notice. With his glad eyes fixed on Jaquelina's face he was praying silently that his life might be spared to him.