some difficulty in finding my partner for the coming dance, I strolled into one of the smaller rooms leading, as I knew, to a certain favorite nook in the conservatory. On the wall at my left was a mirror and chancing to glance that way, I paused and went no further.

For reflected there, from the hidden nook of which I have spoken, I saw Edgar’s face and figure at a moment when the soul speaks rather than the body, thus leaving its choicest secret no longer to surmise.

He was bending to assist a young lady to rise from the seat which they had evidently been occupying together. But the courtesy was that of love and of love at its highest pitch—love at the brink of fate, of loss, of wordless despair. There was no mistaking his look, the grasp of his hand, the trembling of his whole body; and as I muttered to myself,[Pg 40] “This is a farewell,” my heart stood still in my breast and my mind lost itself for the instant in infinite confusion.

[Pg 40]

For the lady was not Orpha, but a tall superb brunette whose countenance was a mirror of his in its tenderness and desolation. Was this the cause of Uncle’s sudden reversal of opinion as to the desirability of a union between the two cousins? Had some unexpected discovery of the state of Edgar’s feelings towards another woman, wrought such a change in his own that he could ask me, me, whether I could love his daughter warmly enough to marry her? If so, I could easily understand the passion with which he had watched the effect of this question upon the only other man whom his pride of blood would allow him to consider as the heir of his hard gotten fortune.

All this was plain enough to me now, but what drove me backward from that mirror and into a spot where I could regain some hold upon myself was the certainty which these conclusions brought of the end of my hopes.

For the scene of which I had just been the inadvertent witness was one of renunciation. Edgar had yielded to his uncle’s exactions and if I were not mistaken in him as well as in my uncle, the announcement would yet be made for which this ball had been given.

How was I to bear it knowing what I did and loving her as I did! How were any of us to endure a situation which left a sting in every heart? It was for Orpha only to dance on untroubled. She had seen nothing—heard nothing to disturb her joy. Might never hear or see anything if we were all true to her and conscientiously masked our unhappiness and despair. Edgar would play his part,—would 

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