Lady Doris wondered why Mattie suddenly kissed her face, and said:
"Heaven bless you, my darling; I hope you will be very happy. I should think, Doris, that you are the happiest girl in all the world."
"Yes," said Doris, "I think I am;" and she added to herself, bitterly, "Would to Heaven I were!"
The countess was more than kind to Mattie; in her own mind she was always thinking how to pay back to Mark Brace's daughter the kindness they had shown Doris. When the two young girls stood together in Lady Doris' dressing-room, she drew off her driving-gloves and laid them on the table; then for the first time Mattie saw the terrible bruise on the white hand; she bent down to look at it.
"What have you done to your pretty hand, Doris?" she asked. "What a frightful bruise!"
"I knocked it against something," was the vague reply. But Mattie saw the burning flush on her sister's face.
"What a pity. Now you will be married with a black, dreadful looking bruise on your hand. That will not get well in ten days."
"Sometimes I think it will never get well at all, Mattie," said Lady Doris, "it has been done some weeks already; I forget how long."
Mattie kissed the dark skin, and Lady Doris shuddered as she remembered whose lips had rested on that hand before.
"When is Earle coming?" she asked, and Lady Doris answered: