“How cruel to lose such a woman! No wonder!” he was thinking, when his eyes were arrested by another vision of beauty, trailing down the grand staircase toward him—no less a person than Annette Janowitz, sparkling, radiant, in rose-pink satin and pearls.
“I am all ready, Daisie, dear!” she cried, in her musical young voice, and the listener reeled backward against the wall, with his hand upon his heart.
“Ah, what is the matter?” cried Daisie, in alarm.
Reed Raymond soon recovered himself, and answered, with a pallid smile:
“I beg pardon—it is nothing. I am—subject—to slight spasms of the heart.”
And he staggered on with her into the library, not daring to glance back at the radiant vision on the stairway, while he groaned to himself:
“Who would have thought of meeting her here? Yet now I remember that Dallas Bain once told me she was Daisie Bell’s dearest friend.”
At that moment Mrs. Fleming entered, exclaiming:
“Well, girls, are you all ready?”
“’Sh-h, Mrs. Fleming! Daisie is taking a stranger into the library.”