h distaste. As
she was leaving, however, she asked if she might have the roses on the
table. When Noel eagerly said yes she took the great bunch in her hand
and went off--he well knew where!

After that she came daily, and the picture progressed, but she, the
beautiful model, remained unchanged in her hopeless apathy and misery.

One day at the close of the sitting Noel, as usual, went from the studio
to his law-office. The season was dull and his partner was out of town,
so it devolved on him to read and attend to the mail. He had read half
through the little pile of letters which he found awaiting his attention
when he took up one bearing the name and address of a law firm in a
Western town, with whom he and his partner had, from time to time,
transacted business. He opened it abstractedly and began to run over the
contents rather listlessly, when a name caught his eye that arrested his
attention. The lawyers proposed to his partner and himself to cooperate
with them in a case of bigamy. They had worked it up satisfactorily,
they said, their client being the first wife of a man said to be now
living with a second one in the city of Noel's residence. The man's name
was Robert Dallas.

Noel sprang to his feet, while a dizziness that made him almost
unconscious took possession of him. He fell back into his chair again, a
chill running through all his veins. If it should be the man Christine
had married so hastily in a foreign country--the father of her child!
The horror of it overcame him so that for several moments he remained
transfixed. Then he reflected that the name might be a mere coincidence,
and took up the letter to finish it.

Every word he read strengthened the conviction that it was the Robert
Dallas that he knew. There was a minute description of him, which
corresponded perfectly, and the lawyer added that he had sent, by
express, a photograph and specimens of his handwriting. Noel looked
about him. An express parcel, which he had not noticed, lay on the
table. He hastily cut the twine and opened it. There were papers and
memoranda, and in an envelope a photograph. He tore it open and the
weak, handsome face of the father of Christine's child confronted him.
There was no longer a doubt of it; Christine, the innocent, the
guileless, the confiding, the pure and sweet and lovely, had been
betrayed, and by this creature, this miserable excuse for a man, whose
dull and feeble beauty looked to him hideous as l