, or nervous, or
something of the kind. How was it I did not notice it before? You must
have caught cold. Yes, I believe I must leave you here."

Consequently, Theo was left. She was quiet enough, too, when her
ladyship had taken her departure. It was generally supposed that Miss
North had accompanied her chaperon, and so she had very few callers. She
spent the greater part of her time in the apartment in which Denis
Oglethorpe had bidden her farewell, and, as may be easily imagined, it
did not add to her lightness of spirit to sit in her old seat and ponder
over the past in the silence of the deserted room. She arose from her
ottoman one night, and walked to one of the great mirrors that extended
from floor to ceiling. She saw herself in it as she advanced--a
regal-like young figure, with a head set like a queen's, speechful dark
eyes, and glowing lips; a face that was half child's, half woman's, and
yet wholly perfect in its fresh young life and beauty. Seeing this
reflection, she stopped and looked at it, in a swift recognition of a
new thought.

"Oh, Pam!" she cried out, piteously. "Oh, my poor, darling, faded Pam.
You were pretty once, too, very dear, pretty and young. And you were
happier than I can be, for Arthur only died. Nobody came between your
love and you--nobody ever could. He died, but he was yours, Pam, and you
were his."

She cried piteously and passionately when she went back to her seat,
rested her arm upon a lounging-chair near her, and hid her face upon it,
crying as only a girl can, with an innocent grief that had a pathos of
its own. She was so lovely and remorseful. It seemed to her that some
fault must have been hers, and she blamed herself that even now she
could not wish that she had never met the man whose love for her was a
dishonor to himself. Where was he now? He had told Lady Throckmorton
that business would call him to several smaller towns on his way, so he
might not be very far from Paris yet. She was thinking of this when at
last she fell asleep, sitting by the fire, still resting her hand upon
the chair by her side. It was by no means unnatural, though by no means
poetic, that her girl's pain should end so.

But when the time-piece on the mantle chimed twelve with its silver
tongue, she found herself suddenly and unaccountably wide awake. She sat
up and looked about her. It was not the clock's chime that had awakened
her she thought. It must have been, something more, she was so