me, I should have had none present at the
fireside save myself and Ellen Meriwether. All these wide gray plains,
faintly tinged in the hollows with green, and all this sweeping sky of
blue, and all this sparkling river, should have been just for ourselves
and no one else.

But my opportunity came in due course, after all. As we rose from the
ground at the conclusion of our meal, the girl dropped one of her
gloves. I hastened to pick it up, walking with her a few paces
afterward.

"The next time we are shipwrecked together," said I, "I shall leave you
on the boat. You do not know your friends!"

"Why do you say that?"

"And yet I knew you at once. I saw the ring on your hand, and recognized
it--it is the same I saw in the firelight on the river bank, the night
we left the _Belle_."

"How brilliant of you! At least you can remember a ring."

"I remember seeing the veil you wear once before--at a certain little
meeting between Mr. Orme and myself."

"You seem to have been a haberdasher in your time, Mr. Cowles! Your
memory of a lady's wearing apparel is very exact. I should feel very
much nattered." None the less I saw the dimple come in her cheek.

She was pulling on her glove as she spoke. I saw embroidered on the
gauntlet the figure of a red heart.

"My memory is still more exact in the matter of apparel," said I. "Miss
Meriwether, is this your emblem indeed--this red heart? It seems to me I
have also seen _it_ somewhere before!"

The dimple deepened. "When Columbus found America," she answered, "it is
said that the savages looked up and remarked to him, 'Ah, we see we are
discovered!'"

"Yes," said I, "you are fully discovered--each of you--all of you, all
three or four of you, Miss _Ellen Meriwether_."

"But you did not know it until now--until this very moment. You did not
know me--could not remember me--not even when the masks were off! Ah, it
was good as a play!"

"I have done nothing else but remember you."

"How much I should value your acquaintance, Mr. Cowles of Virginia! How
rare an opportunity you have given me of seeing on the inside of a man's
heart." She spoke half bitterly, and I saw that in one way or other she
meant revenge.

"I do not understand you," I rejoined.

"No, I suppose you men are all alike--that any one of you would do the
same. It is only the last girl, the nearest girl, that is remembered. Is
it not so?"

"It is not so," I answered.

"How long will you remember me