Mr. Allison's house is a stately up-town mansion, brown stone, stucco, and elegance generally; and Mr. Allison's house is all alight and alive to-night. Mrs. Allison gives a reception, and fair women and brave men muster strong; and fairest, where all are more or less fair, is the youthful and wealthy heiress of old Hugh Darcy.
Among the very latest arrivals comes Mr. Laurence Thorndyke. Time has been when bright eyes brightened, fair cheeks flushed, and delicate pulses leaped at his coming. That day is over. Time has also been when among all the golden youth of New York none were more elegant, more faultless of attire, than Laurence Thorndyke. That day also is over. Time has been when the most exclusive, most recherche doors of Fifth avenue flew gladly open at his approach. That day, likewise, is over. The places that knew him, know him no more; he is an outcast and a Bohemian; he drinks, he gambles, he is poor; his coat is gray at the seams; bistre circles surround his eyes; his haggard, handsome face tells the story of his life. Yet the old elegance and old fascination of manner, linger still. People rather stare to see him here. Mrs. Allison frowns. She has flirted desperately with him "ages" ago; but really bygones should be bygones, and Mr. Thorndyke has gone to the dogs in so pronounced a manner, and been disinherited for some dreadful doings, and, really and truly, the line must be drawn somewhere, and it is inexcusable in Mr. Allison to have asked him at all.
"No one invites him now," Mrs. Allison says, indignantly. "Both he and Helen are socially extinct. They say she takes in sewing, and lives in a dreadful tenement house away over by the East River—and with dear Mrs. Liston-Darcy here and everything! Of course it can't be pleasant for them to meet. He contested the will—if he should make a scene to-night!—good heavens! No doubt he is half-tipsy—they say he always is half-tipsy—and look at his dress! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Arthur Allison, for asking him!"
"Couldn't help it, Hattie—give you my word now," responds Arthur meekly; "he as good as asked me to ask him, when he heard Mrs. Darcy was coming. And he wants to be introduced, and I've promised, and there's no use making a fuss now. He isn't tipsy, and I don't believe there will be a scene. I'll introduce him at once; the sooner it's over, the better."
He goes off uneasily, and leads Mr. Thorndyke into an inner room, where a lady sits at the piano, singing. A lady elegantly dressed in white silk, and violet trimmings, with a white perfumery rose in her black hair. Her face is averted—Mr. Thorndyke glares vindictively at the woman who has ousted him out of a fortune. She is a beautiful singer, and somehow—somehow, the sweet powerful contralto tones are strangely familiar. Can he have ever heard her before?
She finishes. Mr. Allison draws near the piano.
"Mrs. Darcy," he says, clearing his throat, "will you allow me to introduce to you Mr. Thorndyke?"
She is laughingly responding to a complimentary gentleman beside her. With that smile still on her lips she turns slowly round, lifting up her eyes. And with a gasping sound that is neither word nor cry, Laurence Thorndyke stands face to face once more with Norine.
