s
quiet way, as she had thought, that this seemed like disloyalty, and in
the first shock of bewilderment and pain Essie Tisdale was conscious
only that the one person in all the world upon whom she had felt she
could count was being taken from her.

Van Lennop had told her of his invitation in amusement and later had
remarked carelessly that he might accept, but apparently had given it no
further thought. Even in her unhappiness the girl was fair to her
merciless enemy. She looked well--far, far more attractive than Essie
would have believed possible, softer, more feminine and--more dangerous.
Van Lennop was human; and, after all, as she was forced to recognize
more and more fully, she was only the pretty biscuit-shooter of the
Terriberry House. Essie Tisdale pushed the swinging doors from her with
a shaking hand and managed somehow to get back into the kitchen where,
as she thought, with a strange, new bitterness, she belonged.

Van Lennop did not leave Dr. Harpe when the waltz was done, but seated
himself beside her, first parting the curtain that she might get the air
and showing a solicitude for her comfort so different from the cold,
impersonal courtesy of months that her heart beat high with triumph.
Verily, this propitious beginning was all she needed and, she told
herself again, was all she asked. While she believed in herself and her
personal charm when she chose to exercise it, Van Lennop's tacit
recognition of it brightened her eyes and softened her face into smiling
curves of happiness.

Van Lennop toyed with her fan and talked idly of impersonal things, but
there was a veiled look of curiosity in his eyes, a kind of puzzled
wonder each time that they rested upon her face. As he covertly studied
her altered expression and manner, strongly conscious of the different
atmosphere which she created, there rose persistently in his mind
Stevenson's story of the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He
could not conceive a more striking example of dual personality or double
consciousness than Dr. Harpe now presented. There was a girlish shyness
in her fluttering glance, honesty in the depths of her limpid hazel
eyes, while her white, unmarred forehead suggested the serenity of a
good woman, and Van Lennop was dimly conscious that for some undefined
reason he never had thought of her as that. She had personal
magnetism--that he had conceded from the first, for invariably he had
found himself sensible of her pr