"True, how should you know it?" he said, half to himself. "Well, I was, and last week Professor Larue called on me at my hotel."
"The dear old soul! I hope he was well," exclaimed Jaquelina, warmly.
"Yes, he was well," said Ronald Valchester, "and very impatient for your return to New York. A dying man had sent for you, and when he found that you were out of reach he called for me."
"You went?" said Lina, looking at him with wide, dark eyes.
"Yes, Lina. Judge of my surprise when, in an obscure and comfortless abode in the suburbs of Brooklyn, I found the handsome outlaw, Gerald Huntington, stretched upon his dying bed."
"Dying!" Jaquelina repeated after him, with something like awe in her low voice.
"Yes, dying, but dying ashamed and repentant. There was a priest with him. He passed away peacefully."
"And he sent for me?" the girl said, wonderingly.
"Yes, he sent for you, and he was very much disappointed and grieved that you were too far away to come in time. He wished to ask your forgiveness for the cowardly revenge he took upon you for the ill-turn you did him once."
"I have been so sorry for it," she said, weakly, and blushing crimson. "I was so young and untutored I did not think. It was all because I needed the money so much. If I could have seen him on his dying bed I would have asked him to forgive me my sin of ingratitude, and I must have forgiven him for the revenge he took. I could not have refused to forgive him when he was dying."