er ear--was that it
was possible for a woman not to love the Duke. Her jealousy of "that
Miss Dobson" was for a while swallowed up in her pity for him. What she
had borne so cheerfully for herself she could not bear for her hero. She
wished she had not happened to listen.

And this morning, while she knelt swaying and spreading over "his"
doorstep, her blue eyes added certain tears to be scrubbed away in the
general moisture of the stone. Rising, she dried her hands in her apron,
and dried her eyes with her hands. Lest her mother should see that she
had been crying, she loitered outside the door. Suddenly, her roving
glance changed to a stare of acute hostility. She knew well that the
person wandering towards her was--no, not "that Miss Dobson," as she had
for the fraction of an instant supposed, but the next worst thing.

It has been said that Melisande indoors was an evidently French maid.
Out of doors she was not less evidently Zuleika's. Not that she aped her
mistress. The resemblance had come by force of propinquity and devotion.
Nature had laid no basis for it. Not one point of form or colour had
the two women in common. It has been said that Zuleika was not strictly
beautiful. Melisande, like most Frenchwomen, was strictly plain. But
in expression and port, in her whole tournure, she had become, as
every good maid does, her mistress' replica. The poise of her head, the
boldness of her regard and brilliance of her smile, the leisurely and
swinging way in which she walked, with a hand on the hip--all these
things of hers were Zuleika's too. She was no conqueror. None but the
man to whom she was betrothed--a waiter at the Cafe Tourtel, named
Pelleas--had ever paid court to her; nor was she covetous of other
hearts. Yet she looked victorious, and insatiable of victories, and
"terrible as an army with banners."

In the hand that was not on her hip she carried a letter. And on her
shoulders she had to bear the full burden of the hatred that Zuleika had
inspired in Katie. But this she did not know. She came glancing boldly,
leisurely, at the numbers on the front-doors.

Katie stepped back on to the doorstep, lest the inferiority of her
stature should mar the effect of her disdain.

"Good-day. Is it here that Duke D'Orsay lives?" asked Melisande, as
nearly accurate as a Gaul may be in such matters.

"The Duke of Dorset," said Katie with a cold and insular emphasis,
"lives here." And "You," she tried to convey with