planned it. It gave me time to sort out my ideas.

Jane here! Jane going out to dinner with me, believing me to be Clark
Oliver! Jane--but it was incredible! The whole thing was a dream--or I
had gone crazy!

I looked at her sideways when we had got into our places at the table.
She was more beautiful than ever, that tall, brown-haired, disdainful
Jane. The settlement work story I was inclined to dismiss as a myth.
Settlement work in a beautiful woman generally means crowsfeet or a
broken heart. Jane, according to my sight and belief, possessed
neither.

Once upon a time I had been engaged to Jane. I had been idiotically in
love with her in those days and still more idiotically believed that
she loved me. The trouble was that, although I had been cured of the
latter phase of my idiocy, the former had become chronic. I had never
been able to get over loving Jane. All through those two years I had
hugged the fond hope that sometime I might stumble across her in a
mild mood and make matters up. There was no such thing as seeking her
out or writing to her, since she had icily forbidden me to do so, and
Jane had a most detestable habit--in a woman--of meaning what she
said. But the deity I had invoked was the god of chance--and this was
how he had answered my prayers. I was eating my dinner beside Jane,
who supposed me to be Clark Oliver!

What should I do? Confess the truth and plead my cause while she had
to sit beside me? That would never do. Someone might overhear us. And,
in any case, it would be no passport to Jane's favor that I was a
guest in the house under false pretences. She would be certain to
disapprove strongly. It was a maddening situation.

Jane, who was calmly eating soup--she was the only woman I had ever
seen who could eat soup and look like a goddess at the same
time--glanced around and caught me studying her profile. I thought she
blushed slightly and I raged inwardly to think that blush was meant
for Clark Oliver--Clark Oliver who had told me he thought Jane was
smitten on him! Jane! On him!

"Do you know, Mr. Oliver," said Jane slowly, "that you are startlingly
like a--a person I used to know? When I first saw you the other night
I took you for him."

A _person_ you used to know! Oh, Jane, that was the most unkindest cut
of all.

"My cousin, Elliott Cameron, I suppose?" I answered as indifferently
as I could. "We resemble each other very closely. You were acquainted
with Cameron, Miss Harv