“Oh, Maurice, Maurice! I can’t believe that you’re safe here again, after all! And I feel that I was to blame for it all—”
“You? Why, how’s that, sweetheart?”
“Because I flirted with that Cassavetti—at the dinner, don’t you remember? That seemed to be the beginning of everything! I was so cross with you, and he—he puzzled and interested me, though I felt frightened just at the last when I gave him that flower. Maurice, did he take me for the other girl? And was there any meaning attached to the flower?”
“Yes, the flower was a symbol; it meant a great deal,—among other things the fact that you gave it to him made him quite sure you were—the person he mistook you for. You are marvellously like her—”
“Then you—you have met her also? Who is she? Where is she?”
“She is dead; and I don’t know for certain who she was; until Jim met me to-night I believed that she was—you!”
“Were we so like as that?” she breathed. “Why, she might have been my sister, but I never had one; my mother died when I was born, you know! Tell me about her, Maurice.”
“I can’t, dear; except that she was as brave as she was beautiful; and her life was one long tragedy. But I’ll show you her portrait.”
She gave a little cry of astonishment as I handed her the miniature; the diamond setting flashed under the softly shaded electric light.
“Oh, how lovely! But—why, she’s far more beautiful than I am, or ever shall be! Did she give you this, Maurice?”