d ladies invariably tell
the truth, do they not? 'These accidental resemblances are so
deceptive!'" He laughed shortly. "So they are, my dear Mrs. Darcy! Yes,
Allison, it's all a mistake on my part, no doubt."

He turned and swung away to escape Allison, and think his surprise out.
His eyes went after her. Yes, there she was again, the centre of an
admiring group of all that was best in the room. Her beautiful dark face
was all alight, the black, beautiful eyes, like dusk diamonds, the
waving hair most gracefully worn--by odds the most attractive woman in
the rooms. Those years had changed her wonderfully--improved her beyond
telling. The face, clear cut and calm as marble, the lips set and
resolute, the figure matured and grown firm. About her there was all the
uplifted ease, the ineffable self-poise of a woman of the world,
conscious of her beauty, her wealth, and her power.

"And this is Norine--little Norry," Laurence Thorndyke thought in his
trance of wonder. "I can hardly believe my own senses. I thought her
dead, or buried alive down there in the wilds of Maine, and lo! here
she crops up, old Darcy's heiress--beautiful, elegant, and ready to
face me with the courage of a stage heroine--the woman who has done me
out of a fortune. This is her revenge! And I thought her a love-sick
simpleton, ready to lie down and die of a broken heart the hour I left
her. By George! _how_ handsome she has grown. It would be easy enough
for any man to fall in love with her now."

She meant to ignore the past, utterly and absolutely ignore it--that he
saw. Well, he would take his cue from her for the present, and see how
the farce would play. But--was it Norine?--that self-possessed
regal-looking lady! Could it be that those dark, calm, haughty eyes had
ever filled with passionate tears at his slightest word of reproach? had
ever darkened with utter despair at his going? Could it be that yonder
beautiful, stately creature had waited and watched for him in pale
anguish, night after night, his veriest slave?--had clung to him, white
with direst woe, when he had seen her last? Proud, uplifted, calm--could
it be?--could it be?

"Norine, surely; but not the Norine I knew--a Norine ten thousand times
more to my taste. But how, in Heaven's name, has she brought this
transformation about? Mrs. Jane Liston--old Liston's niece. I have it! I
see it all! Liston is at the bottom of this. It is his revenge for Lucy
West; and they have worked a