“What a fool I am,” she told herself, a frown gathering upon her face. “It is Raymond Challoner, of course, as he is now masquerading under the name. Of course I might have expected this, but, nevertheless, it shocked me.’ But aloud she said:
“I will see the gentleman.”
When the man had departed she arose slowly to her feet, ruminating: “As he is impatient, I will not keep him waiting; but he will not relish the message which I bring him from the obstinate little Jess, that she positively refuses to see him, despite all my pleading with her. Raymond Challoner is not quite the lady-killer that he imagines himself to be.”
Despite the fact that she prided herself upon her beauty, and always looking her best on every occasion, she did not even glance at the long French mirror as she swept past it.
She walked slowly down the stairway and along the broad corridor, pausing before the door of the drawing-room, which was ajar.
She swept back the heavy velvet portières with her white, jeweled hand, pausing on the threshold for an instant.
One glance at the tall, commanding figure of the gentleman who had arisen hastily from his seat, and a low cry, half terror, and half joy, broke from her lips.
Great God! Was her brain turning? Was she mad? Or did her eyes deceive her? Instead of the slender, dapper form of Raymond Challoner, she beheld the tall form that she had mourned over as having long since mingled with the dust. John Dinsmore it was, standing, alive and well, before her, in the flesh, surely—not a ghost, a phantom, a delusion.
John Dinsmore reeled back as though some one had struck him a heavy blow, and one word fell from his white lips—“Queenie!”
With an impetuous cry she sprang forward, holding out both of her hands, sobbing: