rm. The
engagement--an affair of six weeks, had been contracted while she was
away from home, and the first intimation she had of it came through a
letter from Ethel Ross inviting her to officiate as bridesmaid. Norma
read and the heart within her died, but she made no sound, for she was
a proud woman--as proud as she was passionate. She even acceded to the
bride's request and, as Thorne's next of kin, led the bevy of girls
selected, from the fairest of society to do honor to the occasion; her
refusal would have excited comment. But as she stood behind the woman,
who she felt had usurped her place, a fierce longing was in her heart
to strike her rival dead at her feet.

After the marriage she continued her intimacy with Mrs. Thorne--and
with Mr. Thorne. When clouds began to gather along the matrimonial
horizon, and "rifts within the lute" to make discord of life's music,
she beheld the one, and hearkened to the other with savage thrills of
satisfaction. She did nothing to widen the breach--Norma was too proud
to be a mischief-maker, but she did nothing to lessen it. She watched
with sullen pleasure the cleft increase to a crack, the crack to a
chasm. When the separation became an accomplished fact, it found
Norma, of course, ranged strongly on the husband's side.

During the year which had elapsed since Thorne's return from abroad,
Norma had contrived to establish considerable influence over her
cousin. She studied him quietly, and adapted herself to his moods,
never boring him with an over-display of interest, never chilling him
with an absence of it. Her plan was to make herself necessary to him,
and in part she succeeded. Thorne, lonely and cut adrift, came more
and more frequently to his aunt's house and exhibited more and more
decidedly his preference for his cousin's society. The thin end of the
wedge was in, and but for the move to Virginia, and its ill-starred
consequences, the inevitable result must have followed.

Would it follow now? A vision of Pocahontas, with her fair face, and
her sweet gray eyes framed in a soft cloud of white, standing on the
lower step of the stairway, with Thorne beside her, his head bent low
over the hand he clasped, rose before Norma's eyes and caused them to
burn with jealous anger. Here was the old thing repeating itself; here
was flirtation again, the exact extent of which she could not
determine. It must be stopped at once, trampled out ere the flame
should do