ely court no less gaily
for the stealthy doubt that was creeping over her spirit. She had been
so certain of what would happen that evening that when her father
(between cigars on the porch with Judge Chalmers and Doctor Southall)
had searched her out under a flag-of-truce, she had sent him to the
right-about, laughingly declining to depart before royalty. But number
followed number, and the knight in purple and gold had not paused again
before her. Now the scarlet cloak no longer flaunted among the dancers,
and the white satin gown and sparkling coronal had disappeared. The end
of the next "round-dance" found her subsiding into the flower-banked
alcove suddenly distrait amid her escort's sallies. It was at this
moment that she saw, entering the corridor from the garden, the missing
couple.

It was not the faint flush on Shirley's cheek--that was not deep--nor
was it his nearness to her, though they stood closely, as lovers
might. But there was in both their faces a something that resurgent
conventionality had not had time to cover--a trembling reflection of
that "light that never was, on sea or land"--which was like a death-stab
to what lay far deeper than Katharine's heart, her pride. She drew
swiftly back, dismayed at the sudden verification, and for an instant
her whole body chilled.

A craving for a glass of water has served its purpose a thousand times;
as her cavalier solicitously departed to fetch the cooling draught, she
rose, and carelessly humming the refrain the music had just left off,
sauntered lightly out by another door to the open air. A swift glance
about her showed her she was unobserved and she stepped down to the
grass and along the winding path to a bench at some distance in the
shrubbery. Here the smiling mask slipped from her face and with a shiver
she dropped her hot face in her hands.

There were no tears. The wave that was welling over her was one of
bitter humiliation. She had shot her bolt and missed--she, Katharine
Fargo! For three years she had held John Valiant, romantically speaking,
in the hollow of her shapely hand. Now she had all but thrown herself at
his feet--and he had turned away to this flame-haired, vivid girl whom
he had not known as many months! The rankling barb was dipped in no
poison of unrequited love. Hers was the anger of the self-willed and
intensely proud woman denied her dearest wish, and crossed and flouted
for the first time in her pampered exquisite life.

He