not come back to the city soon, Miss Payne? Surely your old
home can not be the most charming place, in your eyes," questioned
Clarence, after a time.

"I don't intend returning to the city--at least, not for some time,
Doctor Vaughan."

Clarence looked perplexed.

To break the silence that ensued, Claire crossed to the piano and
began playing soft, dreamy fragments of melody.

Presently Olive took up the conversation, and when Madeline again
turned her face toward him, he was listening to Olive and looking at
Claire. It was the same look, yearning, tender.

Claire, all unconscious of his gaze, was looking at Madeline, as she
played softly on.

As Olive and Clarence talked, Claire saw the face of the girl grow
dark; she saw her eyes full of a hungry, despairing light, and
gradually there crept upon her the remembrance that she had seen that
same look, only not so woful, in the eyes of Clarence Vaughan; that
same look fixed upon herself. Involuntarily her fingers slipped from
the keys, and she turned from the instrument to encounter the same
gaze fastened upon her now; ardent, tender, longing eyes they were,
and her own fell before them.

Claire Keith was troubled. She wanted to be alone, to think. She
murmured an excuse; her head ached; she would retire.

Clarence had noted an unusual brightness in her eye, and a feverish
flush upon her cheek. Now, however, she was quite pale, and as she
extended her hand to him with a strange, new sensation of diffidence
and consciousness, he clasped it for a moment in his own, and said,
earnestly: "You do not look at all well, Miss Keith; you are sure it
is only a headache?"

"Quite sure," smiling faintly.

"Then good-night. I shall enquire after your head to-morrow."

"Thank you," she murmured.

Then nodding to her sister and Madeline, she glided from the room.

It had _all_ come upon her at once. Edward Percy was an impostor;
Edward Percy, as she had believed in him, had never existed. The love
that she had believed hers was hers no longer, or, if it were, she no
longer desired it. Almost simultaneously with this knowledge, came the
unspoken assurance that she was the possessor of a worthier love, a
manlier heart.

She could not feel glad to know this, yet she was not sorry. Somehow
it soothed her to know that she was not a forsaken, loveless maiden.
It was something to possess the love of so good a man, even if she
could make it no return.

But Madeline. Poor M