"Who is this, Dolores?" he asked, picking up the card, and standing as if transfixed.
Dolores went forward and looked over his shoulder. She thought he was relenting toward her, and if a reconciliation seemed possible, she desired it at any cost.
Ah! pitying heaven! how at the mercy of the weakest man, the strongest woman is, if she loves him.
"That?" she said, laying her hand gently on his arm, "that is an old picture of a school-mate of mine,—oh, how long ago it seems! She was the only intimate friend I ever had until I met Mrs. Butler. And yet I have utterly lost all trace of her. Our correspondence died a natural death, before I had been two years abroad."
"What was her name?" asked Percy, and his heart almost stood still to listen to her reply.
"Her name was Lena—Helena Maxon. She lived in a pretty place called Elm Hill. I suppose she is married and the mother of a family ere this. She was just the kind of girl to marry young, and she was abnormally fond of babies, I remember. She actually brought her doll to school with her, when she was seventeen years old."
Dolores talked on volubly, glad to forget the torturing scene of a few moments before. She fancied that he felt the same, and that he was asking these questions simply to bridge over their quarrel.
Percy thought the room was whirling around him. He sat down in a neighboring chair.
"I wonder you never spoke of her to me before!" he said. "She has an interesting face. I did not know you had such a friend in America. Why have you never looked her up?"
She gazed at him in questioning surprise, his voice, his manner were so strange.