She had never ceased to regret that, when the heartless Mrs. Levy had turned her out of doors, she had forgotten to take with her the little journal, the confidant of her girlish secrets, her love, her hopes, her sorrows.

Blushes would always overspread her lovely face and neck when she wondered whether Sadie Allen, or any one else, had read the little book and discovered her foolish secret—her love for Bayard Lorraine.

“I hope that no one will ever know that,” she would sigh, most bitterly; yet the old tenderness and the half pique were still there; the blue eyes and the proud, handsome face were still distinct in her memory, and at times a bitter pang would pierce her heart at thought of her wasted love and hopes.

And then she would wonder if he was married, and if he was happy with his chosen bride, and such thoughts as these would leave a shadow on her face in even the gayest scenes, causing one of her admirers to exclaim one day that a shadow had crossed the sun.

She was very fond of books, and one day a literary man asked her if she had read the new American novel that had created such a sensation.

“No,” she replied, and he promised to bring her the book, saying laughingly that she ought to be better acquainted with the authors of her native land.

She read the book, and was charmed with its clever delineations of character and its romantic and original plot. It was the work of a man of genius, and made a deep impression on the mind of Fair; yet, strangely enough, she did not think of glancing at the title page to find out the name of the author.

She told her literary friend how much she admired the book, and then he said:

“By the way, the author is in London at present. He crossed the ‘big pond’ a few days ago to look after the interests of his book, which was published here simultaneously with its appearance in New York. I have had the pleasure of an introduction. Would you like for me to bring him to call?”

“I—I don’t know,” she said, pursing her lips dubiously. “Would he be interesting, do you think?”

“All the ladies who have seen him declare that he is more charming than his book.”

“Young?”

“On the sunny side of thirty.”

“Oh, how pleasant! I wish I were smart enough to write a book.”

Her English friend laughed at her Yankee phrase, “smart,” then asked:

“May I bring him?”

“Please do; I want to see if he looks like his hero,” she replied, with awakened interest, and that day she told her adopted mother that Mr. Converse was going to bring the American author to call.

“What is his name?”

“I have forgotten—that is, I don’t believe I ever looked in the book to see.”

“Look now,” said Mrs. Howard.

But at that moment the Fraynes, their traveling companions, were announced, and the American author was forgotten in an animated discussion of the Italian winter they were going to have. The Fraynes—who consisted of a father and mother, a son who was in love with Fair, and two pretty daughters—had consented to be the guests of Mrs. Howard at the prince’s villa.

It was on the evening of a day two days later that a small party of sociable people were gathered in Mrs. Howard’s drawing-room, when their number was suddenly swelled by the appearance of Mr. Converse and a gentleman whom he introduced to Mrs. Howard and the company as Mr. Lorraine.

Fair had not yet come down. She had gone to her room after dinner, to change her dinner dress, that had been soiled with gravy by an awkward waiter.

Her maid, a trim English girl, gave her a dress of white clairette cloth, whose soft, lustrous folds fell about the slender, graceful form with statuesque grace. She wore a wide sash of soft, white silk, tied at the side in long, graceful loops. She was only medium height, but the costume made her look tall, and when Betty had fastened the pearls on the bare white arms and the bare throat, exposed by a square-necked bodice, she—the poor working girl so suddenly transplanted into an atmosphere of wealth and luxury—looked like a young princess, so graceful was her form, so beautiful her face, with its glorious, dark-brown eyes, whose dazzling light was all that was needed to relieve the severity of her pure white drapery.

“Mother likes me in white,” she said, with a gratified glance into the broad mirror, and, taking up her big bunch of white ostrich feathers, called by Dame Fashion a fan, she swept out, followed by the admiring remark from Betty:

“I like you in any color, miss. You look sweet in all.”

She went on, with a smile at the maid’s flattery, humming, as she walked, the low refrain of a love song—then the drawing-room door opened. She was on the threshold, a lovely, slender shape, all in white, with a vivid face lighted by starry eyes and crowned by shining red-gold hair; and a man had started up in amazement from Mrs. Howard’s side, and was staring at her with wondering eyes. She did not see him at first, for she was greeting several friends; but all at once she heard Converse say at her side:

“I’ve brought the American author, Miss Howard. Here he is—Bayard Lorraine!”

When they stood face to face, she was the calmer of the two. She had been nerving herself for this so long, looking for it, longing for it, that now, with a glad consciousness of her perfect beauty, and an inward thrill of deep emotion, she could greet Bayard Lorraine with a lovely girlish dignity all her own. It was he who looked startled, disturbed. He stared at her in perplexity, as if she had been a ghost.

Fair looked at him with a smile. She could guess what made him stare in such surprise.

She made him think of the girl whose life he had saved two years ago.

“He remembers my face, although he was too proud to ask my name,” she thought, and it soothed her wounded pride to think that he had at least retained some memory of her through the time that had elapsed.

But not for worlds would she have owned to her identity.

“We meet now on equal terms,” was her swift thought, and she determined to hold her vantage ground.

What could come of it? Nothing! She was not free, and it was more than likely that he was married. Yet a headlong fate seemed to urge her on to know him better, to make the most of her opportunity, to gain from this fleeting chance some more bittersweet memories to wear thread-bare with constant usage in coming years.

While these swift emotions rather than thoughts ran through her whirling brain, he recovered himself, and greeted her with simple conventional ease, apologizing with easy grace for his wondering stare.

“I fear you took me for a moon-struck lunatic—but I was beauty-struck.”

So he did not intend to tell her that she had startled him by her likeness to a poor working girl whose life he had saved two years ago? It was all the better. She would be saved from the sin of evading her identity.

A minute more, and they were sitting side by side on the same sofa, talking to each other with the formality of strangers, it is true, yet gazing into each other’s eyes with a more than ordinary interest.

He was handsomer than ever, she was thinking, and a thrill of rapture went through her as she thought she detected in the blue eyes a look of more than conventional admiration.

“What if he should love me? Oh, Heaven, the sweetness of that thought!” the girl whispered to her throbbing heart, and the warm color rose to her face, and the brown eyes filled with a happy light.

“I have read your book. Is it your first one?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Converse tells me that it has had a flattering success. Your wife must feel very proud of you.”

She was fanning herself with useless energy—the room was not too warm—as she put this leader.

“My wife!” he said, in a puzzled tone, then laughed. “I hope she will be when I get her, but just now she is in the future.”

“Oh, so you are not a married man?” she exclaimed naïvely, and he shook his head, thinking to himself:

“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.