"Have you yet had a waltz with handsome Harry Kendal?"
"No," returned the other, ruefully. "At the last ball I went to he was almost wild to put his name down for every waltz with me. But, after all, I can not wonder at that when I see how greatly he is infatuated with the beauty of the ball to-night—the fair Iris Vincent."
"Have you heard all the talk to-night about that?" chimed in the other, her voice sinking to a low, confidential tone. "Every one has noticed it, and it is the talk of the ball-room."
"It is shameful for him to carry on so," returned her companion, "when every one knows that his wedding day with poor, blind Dorothy Glenn is so near at hand."
"Do you know," said the other, slowly, "that I doubt if he will ever marry Dorothy now? You must remember that he became engaged to her before that terrible accident. And do you know there is great diversity of opinion as to whether the poor fellow should marry her or not. It is very nice to read about in books—of lovers proving true to their fiancées through every trouble and tribulation—but I tell you they don't do it in real life. When trouble comes to a girl, nine lovers out of ten fly from her 'to seek pastures new;' and, after all, to come right down to the fine point, between you and me, could you really blame Harry Kendal if he were to break off with Dorothy? He is young and handsome, and I say that it would be a bitter shame for him to go through life with a blind girl for a wife; and when I think of it I actually feel indignant with the girl for holding him to his engagement under such circumstances. She ought to know that in time he would actually hate her for it. She can share none of his joys. Why, she would be only a pitiful burden to handsome Harry Kendal! That girl whom he seems so infatuated with would be a thousand times more suitable for him. Oh, what a handsome couple they do make! And every one can see, though they think they hide it so well, how desperately they are in love with each other."
They moved on, little dreaming of the ruin and blight they had left behind them.
They were scarcely out of hearing when the great cry that had been choked back so long burst forth in a wild, piercing wail of agony that meant the breaking then and there of a human heart. But the dance-music inside, to which the joyous, merry feet kept time, completely drowned it.
Dorothy had risen from her chair, and the look on her face was terrible to behold.
"Let me quite understand it," she whispered—"let me try to realize and grasp the awful truth: Harry Kendal, my lover, has ceased to care for me, and is lavishing his attention, nay, more, his affection, upon another and one who in return loves him; and they say that I should give him up to her—I, who love him better than my own life! He is all I have left me in my terrible affliction, and they would take even him from me and give him to another. They said it was not right for me to cling to him, and to burden him with a blind wife through life—that the thought is torture to him. Oh, God in Heaven! can it be true?"
And again the angels at the great White Throne were startled with the piercing cries of woe that broke from the girl's white lips, which once more the dance-music mercifully drowned.