out love--he thinks
he has said all there is to say. And his caresses are the same way--just
a little bit constrained, you know."

Iris Vincent had learned all she cared to know.

"Thank you, dear, ever so much, for gratifying my curiosity," she said
aloud; but in her own heart she said:

"I knew it--I knew it! Handsome Harry Kendal does not love this girl
with whom they have forced him into a betrothal. No wonder he looks sad
and melancholy, with a prospect before him of marrying a blind wife! Ah,
me! it is too dreadful a fate to even contemplate."

She looked complacently in the mirror at her own face. Well might Harry
Kendal have remarked that it was as beautiful as a poet's dream.

Nothing could have been more exquisitely lovely than the deep, velvety,
violet eyes, almost purple in their glorious depths, and the bronze-gold
hair, such as Titian loved to paint, that fell in heavy curls to her
slender waist.

One would scarcely meet in a life-time a girl of such wondrous
loveliness. Iris was only twenty, but already she had broken hearts by
the score.

She had only to smile at a man with those ripe, red, perfect lips, and
give him one glance from those mesmeric eyes, and he was straightway her
slave. And she gloried in her power.

Thrice she had broken up betrothals, and three young girls were
heart-broken in consequence, and had lifted up their anguished voices
and cursed her for her fatal beauty. But Iris only laughed her mellow,
wicked little laugh when she heard of it, and said:

"Poor little simpletons! Before they engage themselves they ought to
have been sure that they held their lovers' hearts completely. It were
better for them to realize before than after marriage that the men they
meant to stake their all upon could prove fickle at the first
opportunity when a pretty girl crossed their paths."

And who could say that there was not some little truth in this?

The two girls whose paths were to cross so bitterly slept peacefully
side by side that night; but long after Iris' eyes had closed in
slumber, Dorothy lay awake with oh! such a heavy load on her heart.

She wished she was gay and bright, like Iris, and oh! what would she not
have given only to see--only to see once again! And she turned her face
to where she knew the moonlight lay in great yellow bars on the floor,
and sobbed as she had never sobbed since she had become blind, and fell
asleep with the tear-drops staining her pale face, a l