e conserved an
ostensible calm, although she felt the glance of his eye as sensitively
as red hot steel. But he--as he dropped the hand of his hostess and
advanced toward her guest--in one moment his fictitious composure
deserted him. For this was not the widow in weeds whom he had expected to
see, not the woman of whom he had trained himself to think, when he must
needs think of her at all, as another man's wife. This was his own fair
Past, the unfulfilled promise of his future, the girl he had adored, the
ideal wife whom he had worshipped in his cherished dreams! Just as always
heretofore, she stood now, so fresh, so fair, so candid-seeming, wearing
her white serge gown with her usual distinction, a spray of golden-rod
fastened in her mass of yellow hair that glowed with a sheen of differing
gold. How had time spared her! How had griefs left her scathless! It was
an effort to reflect that two years and more had elapsed since he had
read the obituary of Archibald Royston, with scornful amusement to mark
the grotesque lie to the living in the fulsome tribute to the dead.

In some sort, Bayne was prepared for change, for the new identity that
the strange falling out of events betokened. He had never realized her,
he had never divined her character, he would have said. She was now, as
she had always been, an absolute stranger. But this little hand--ah, he
knew it well! How often it had lain in his clasp, and once more every
fibre thrilled at its touch. With all his resolution, he could not
restrain the flush that mounted to his brow, the responsive quiver in his
voice as he murmured her name, the name of Archibald Royston's wife, so
repugnant to his lips. He was in a state of revolt against himself, his
self-betrayal, to realize that she and the two Briscoes could not fail to
mark his confusion, attributing his emotion to whatsoever cause they
would. Indeed, in the genial altruism of host, Briscoe had succeeded in
breaking from the thrall of embarrassment to shield and save the
situation.

"Why, here is Archie!" he exclaimed resonantly. "How are _you_, old
man?" His clear tones were vibrant with disproportionate elation at the
prospect of a diversion of the painful interest of the scene.

For at the moment a fine blond boy of three years burst in at the rear
door of the apartment and came running to meet Mrs. Royston, just
apprised, doubtless, of her return from her afternoon stroll. He looked
very fresh in his white li