here was a spirit in her approach and a steady look in her dark
eye which assured me that I could not calculate upon any loss in
Lucetta's keenness, in case we came to an issue over the mystery that
was eating into the happiness as well as the honor of this household.

"I am glad to see you," were her unexpected words. "The gentleman who
has just gone out was a lover of mine; at least he once professed to
care for me very much, and I should have been glad to have married him,
but there were reasons which I once thought most excellent why this
seemed anything but expedient, and so I sent him away. To-day he came
without warning to ask me to go away with him, after the hastiest of
ceremonies, to South America, where a splendid prospect has suddenly
opened for him. You see, don't you, that I could not do that; that it
would be the height of selfishness in me to leave Loreen--to leave
William----"

"Who seems only too anxious to be left," I put in, as her voice trailed
off in the first evidence of embarrassment she had shown since she faced
me.

"William is a difficult man to understand," was her firm but quiet
retort. "From his talk you would judge him to be morose, if not
positively unkind, but in action--" She did not tell me how he was in
action. Perhaps her truthfulness got the better of her, or perhaps she
saw it would be hard work to prejudice me now in his favor.

XVI

LOREEN

Lucetta had said to her departing lover, that in a week she might be
able (were he willing or in a position to wait) to give him a more
satisfactory answer. Why in a week?

That her hesitation sprang from the mere dislike of leaving her sister
so suddenly, or that she had sacrificed her life's happiness to any
childish idea of decorum, I did not think probable. The spirit she had
shown, her immovable attitude under a temptation which had not only
romance to recommend it, but everything else which could affect a young
and sensitive woman, argued in my mind the existence of some uncompleted
duty of so exacting and imperative a nature that she could not even
consider the greatest interests of her own life until this one thing was
out of her way. William's rude question of the morning, "What shall we
do with the old girl till it is all over?" recurred to me in support of
this theory, making me feel that I needed no further confirmation, to be
quite certain that a crisis was approaching in this house which would
tax my powers to th