“Pretty flirt! She put that leader very cleverly. She did not intend to waste herself on me if I was a benedict.”
He had seen the look of pleasure on her face, and it thrilled his heart.
“She is glad—so am I,” was the inward comment, for he was conscious of a dangerous intoxication in her presence, which he did not try to resist.
She was so beautiful, so charming; besides, that haunting likeness about her added to the fascination she exercised over him.
When they parted that night, it was with a promise of meeting on the morrow, and neither Bayard Lorraine nor Fairfax Fielding slept at all that night for thinking of each other and longing for the meeting next day.
Fair had her heart’s desire. The man she had loved at first sight, whose memory she had worshiped in silence for two long years, had fallen in love with her at their first meeting.
She had read it already in the frank, clear glance of the splendid blue eyes.
“And only last night I wept on my pillow because I was convinced that I should never see him again,” she told herself, in rapturous wonder.
CHAPTER XIX.
FETTERS OF THE PAST.
The two weeks that intervened before Mrs. Howard went to Florence passed like a happy dream to Fair.