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The winter had lapsed into spring. It was April—the May of colder climates. In a week—a day—Nature had rushed into bloom. Even Madame Koller, who cared little for these things, was awakened to the beauty surrounding her. She spent hours walking in the fresh morning air and thinking—thinking. The few times she saw Pembroke, and the quiet, formal courtesy with which he treated her was as wind to flame. In his absence she was perpetually thinking of him, devising wild and extravagant methods of winning him. It was her pride, she now persuaded herself, that needed to be avenged. Again throwing prudence wildly aside, she boldly acknowledged to herself that it was love. For the first time in her life she was thrown upon herself—and a very dangerous and undisciplined self it was. Sometimes she blamed him less than he deserved for whatever folly he had been a party to—and again she blamed him more. Madame Koller was fast working herself up to the point of an explosion.

Toward dusk one evening, as Olivia Berkeley sat in the dim drawing-room where a little fire crackled on the hearth, although the windows were opened to the purple twilight outside, she heard a light step upon the portico—and the next moment, Madame Koller walked in.