Page:The Country-House Party.djvu/30

22 Yes, it was strange she was wed to John, when Nature had intended this man who stood smiling upon her to be her mate. Why had he left her without a word? 'I am going to make my fortune,' was all he had said, and smiling, had left her—as he met her now.

'Have you made it?' she inquired, and he seemed to know what she meant.

'No,' he answered rather sadly. Then this, she thought, was the reason he never wrote.

She felt his eyes resting on her with the old look, one she had known. She tried to think of John, of James, of the dull life that she had chosen, but her mind would not rest on it; all seemed so far away.

'Do you know you are more beautiful than ever?' he said.

And she shook her head, but he bid her look into the still water, where she saw her face. 'Why, I thought I was old,' she whispered; 'but that was when I was a slave.'

'A slave?' he questioned.

Then she, confused and afraid, spoke of John.

'John!' he said, his strange eyes upon her. 'There is no John.'