whose
flowing black hair and full beard were streaked with gray. His dark
face, hollow in the cheeks and not too well-colored with the glow of
health, seemed to get light and vivacity from his melancholy eyes.
Seriousness was the characteristic expression. Once he laughed, in the
whole evening. Once he looked straight into her face, with so fixed, so
intense an expression, so near a gaze, so intimate and penetrating, that
she gave a low cry.

"You have recognized him?" Edith whispered mad with joy.

"No, indeed," she answered sadly, "That is not Horace Endicott. Not a
feature that I recall, certainly no resemblance. I was startled because
I saw just now in his look, ... he looked towards me into the glass ...
an expression that seemed familiar ... as if I had seen it before, and
it had hurt me then as it hurts me now."

"There's a beginning," said Edith with triumph. "Next time for a nearer
look."

"Oh, he could never have changed so," Sonia cried with bitterness of
heart.

Curran secured tickets for a ball to be held by a political association
in the Cherry Hill district, and placed the ladies in a quiet corner of
the gallery of the hall. Arthur Dillon, as a leading spirit in the
society, delighted to mingle with the homely, sincere, warm-hearted, and
simple people for whom this occasion was a high festival; and nowhere
did his sorrow rest so lightly on his soul, nowhere did he feel so
keenly the delight of life, or give freer expression to it. Edith kept
Sonia at the highest pitch of excitement and interest.

"Remember," she said now, "that he probably knows you are in town, that
you are here watching him; but not once will he look this way, nor do a
thing other than if you were miles away. My God, to be an actor like
that!"

The actor played his part to perfection and to the utter disappointment
of the women. The serious face shone now with smiles and color, with the
flash of wit and the play of humor. Horace Endicott had been a merry
fellow, but a Quaker compared with the butterfly swiftness and gaiety of
this young man, who led the grand march, flirted with the damsels and
chatted with the dames, danced as often as possible, joked with the men,
found partners for the unlucky, and touched the heart of every
rollicking moment. The old ladies danced jigs with him, proud to their
marrow of the honor, and he allowed himself ... Sonia gasped at the
sight ... to execute a wild Irish _pas seul_ amid the thunderou