"It was not you that died, Laurie Meredith. That was a clever sham, like your marriage with me. You were false to the core of your heart, and perhaps combined with my cruel sister to get rid of me."
Wounded pride, bitter resentment, and a terror of being thrown helpless on the world, held her back from betraying herself to him who would have welcomed her so gladly.
It was pitiful for those two who had loved so well, who had been all the world to each other, whose hearts still held each other's image, to meet as mere strangers, to speak coldly to each other, yet a cruel fate, in the person of Jewel Fielding, had willed it so, and they moved and acted like mere puppets under her merciless hands.
"He did not even remember me. He betrayed not the slightest emotion on meeting me, while I—I was trembling with excitement. If indeed it be the Laurie of old he soon tired of me, and then forgot me utterly, so that after a few years he can meet me with a glance of a stranger," she thought, bitterly; and pride came to her aid to uphold her in the task of meeting indifference with indifference.
"Yet I would give the world to find out if it is really Laurie, or only a relative with a startling resemblance," she thought many times.
As they met so often in society, this longing grew upon her, but she could find no means of gratifying it, for she could not ask any one else about it, and Jewel was so jealous over her lover that she kept him chained like a slave to her triumphal car.
But one afternoon they met at a kettle-drum—a species of informal entertainments then raging in society. The gentlemen came in their ordinary dress, the ladies in calling or simple walking costume. Chance threw Laurie Meredith and Azalia Brooke together in a cozy corner, with their cups of tea.
Jewel? She was tête-à-tête with a distinguished gentleman, from whom she could not escape just now with strict courtesy. She listened with a forced smile to his fluent periods, and furtively watched the pair over yonder, coquetting, as she said angrily to herself, over their fragrant cups of tea and thin cakes.
Miss Brooke's exquisite beauty appeared to advantage in a close-fitting tailor suit of broadcloth. A plumed turban of the same becoming hue set off her rippling golden hair.
She said to her companion, with a fast-beating heart: