bably
concluded that I was some harmless lunatic.

"Like me? Not at all. There couldn't be two people more dissimilar.
Marian is quite dark. I am fair. And our features are altogether
unlike. Why, good evening, Jack. Yes, I believe I did promise you this
dance."

She bowed to me and skimmed away with Jack. I saw Aunt Grace bearing
down upon me and fled incontinently. In my own room I flung myself on
a chair and tried to think the matter out. Where did the mistake come
in? How had it happened? I shut my eyes and conjured up the vision of
Peter's room that day. I remembered vaguely that, when I had picked up
Dorothy Armstrong's picture, I had noticed another photograph that had
fallen face downward beside it. That must have been Marian Lindsay's,
and Peter had thought I meant it.

And now what a position I was in! I was conscious of bitter
disappointment. I had fallen in love with Dorothy Armstrong's
photograph. As far as external semblance goes it was she whom I loved.
I was practically engaged to another woman--a woman who, in spite of
our correspondence, seemed to me now, in the shock of this discovery,
a stranger. It was useless to tell myself that it was the mind and
soul revealed in those letters that I loved, and that that mind and
soul were Marian Lindsay's. It was useless to remember that Peter had
said she was pretty. Exteriorly, she was a stranger to me; hers was
not the face which had risen before me for nearly a year as the face
of the woman I loved. Was ever unlucky wretch in such a predicament
before?

Well, there was only one thing to do. I must stand by my word. Marian
Lindsay was the woman I had asked to marry me, whose answer I must
shortly go to receive. If that answer were "yes" I must accept the
situation and banish all thought of Dorothy Armstrong's pretty face.

Next evening at sunset I went to "Glenwood," the Lindsay place.
Doubtless, an eager lover might have gone earlier, but an eager lover
I certainly was not. Probably Marian was expecting me and had given
orders concerning me, for the maid who came to the door conveyed me to
a little room behind the stairs--a room which, as I felt as soon as I
entered it, was a woman's pet domain. In its books and pictures and
flowers it spoke eloquently of dainty femininity. Somehow, it suited
the letters. I did not feel quite so much the stranger as I had felt.
Nevertheless, when I heard a light footfall on the stairs my heart
beat painfully. I stood