At that moment Van Berg came out on the piazza. Although he could not hear her words, her laugh and tones jarred unpleasantly on his ear.
"Yonder is a genuine affinity," he muttered, "which I was a fool to think I could break up;" and with a slight contemptuous gesture he turned on his heel and went to his room.
"I cannot altogether understand you this evening, Miss Mayhew," said Sibley, with some resentment in his tone.
"You are not to blame for that, Mr. Sibley, for I do not understand myself. I have not felt well to-day, and so had better say good-night."
But before she could leave him he seized her hand and exclaimed, in his soft, insinuating tones:
"That then is the only trouble between us. Next Saturday evening
I shall find you your old charming self?"
"Perhaps," was her unsatisfactory answer.
With a step that grew slower and heavier every moment, she went to her room, turned up the light, and looked fixedly at herself in the glass,
"I wish that outward beauty
Were the mirror of the heart,"
she repeated inaudibly, and the her exquisite lip curled in self-contempt.