The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Path of a Star, by
Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

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Title: The Path of a Star

Author: Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

Release Date: June 6, 2006 [EBook #5102]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PATH OF A STAR ***

Produced by Don Lainson

THE PATH OF A STAR

By Mrs. Everard Cotes

(AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

1899

CHAPTER I

She pushed the portiere aside with a curved hand and gracefully
separated fingers; it was a staccato movement and her body followed it
after an instant's poise of hesitation, head thrust a little forward,
eyes inquiring and a tentative smile, although she knew precisely who
was there. You would have been aware at once that she was an actress.
She entered the room with a little stride and then crossed it quickly,
the train of her morning gown--it cried out of luxury with the cheapest
voice--taking folds of great audacity as she bent her face in its loose
mass of hair over Laura Filbert, sitting on the edge of a bamboo sofa,
and said--

"You poor thing! Oh, you POOR thing!"

She took Laura's hand as she spoke, and tried to keep it; but the hand
was neutral, and she let it go. "It is a hand," she said to herself,
in one of those quick reflections that so often visited her ready-made,
"that turns the merely inquiring mind away. Nothing but feeling could
hold it."

Miss Filbert made the conventional effort to rise, but it came to
nothing, or to a mere embarrassed accent of their greeting. Then her
voice showed this feeling to be superficial, made nothing of it, pushed
it to one side.

"I suppose you cannot see the foolishness of your pity," she said. "Oh
Miss Howe, I am happier than you are--much happier." Her bare feet, as
she spoke, nestled into the coarse Mirzapore rug on the floor, and her
eye lingered approvingly upon an Owari vase three feet high, and thick
with the gilded landscape of Japan, which stood near it, in the cheap
magnificence of the room.

Hilda smiled. Her smile acquiesced in the world she had found,
acquiesced, with the gladness of an explorer, in Laura Filb