Alas! destiny is strong. We could not shirk it if we would.
The fair little hand shot back the bolt and turned the doorknob.
And as the lid of Pandora’s box was opened, letting out evil on the world, so with the opening of the door Jessie let in love and pain:
Those kinsfolk twain.
On the threshold confronting her stood a young man of perhaps four and twenty, and if you had searched New York over you could not have found a more perfect specimen of manly grace, strength, and beauty.
Tall, athletic, with fine, clear-cut features, eyes like deep, blue pools under thick-fringed lashes, brown, clustering locks of silken gloss and softness, he was a man to look at twice with frank admiration, and when you added to nature’s gifts the best efforts of the tailor, a man to set any girl’s heart throbbing wildly in her breast.
“I wish to see Madame Barto, please,” he said, in a voice of such strong agitation that Jessie looked at him in wonder at the deep pallor of his handsome young face and the lines of pain between his knitted brows.
“I will tell madame,” she said, leaving him in the anteroom, walking impatiently up and down.
Madame was deeply interested in her detective story, and she yawned impatiently, saying:
“Tell him I’m engaged with a caller, and will be at leisure in about ten minutes.”