Her heart would fill with yearning tenderness almost unbearable when she looked back at the early days of that brief, sweet courtship.

How strong, noble, true and brave he had seemed—­how kind of heart!

She had seen him pick up a little birdling that had fallen from its nest, lying with a bruised wing in the dust of the roadside, and restore it to the mother bird to be nursed back to health and life, and go out of his way to rescue a butterfly that had fallen in the millpond.

It seemed like the distorted imagination of some diseased brain to bring herself to the realization that this same gentle hand that had rescued the robin and the butterfly had struck her down to death—­that the kind, earnest voice that had been wont to whisper nothing but words of devotion and eternal love should fling out the vilest and bitterest of oaths at her, because she was not the heiress he had taken her to be.

And without one tear, one bitter regret, he had consigned her to that lonely grave and gone back to the life which he had declared he could never live without her.

Where was he now? she wondered vaguely; then she laughed a low, bitter laugh, sadder than any tears.

He had missed the fortune he had hoped for and was back again in the office of Marsh & Co.

Then the thought came to her again with crushing, alarming force—­would he not (believing her dead and himself free to woo and wed again) seek out some other heiress, since that was his design?  Many young girls came to the assistant cashier’s window just as she had done; he would select the richest and marry her.

The very thought seemed to stab her to the heart with a keen, subtle pain which she could neither understand nor clearly define, even to herself.

“Heaven pity her in the hour when she finds that she has been deceived—­that he married her for gold, not love,” she sobbed, covering her face with her little trembling hands.

She prayed to Heaven silently that Claire’s lover, whoever he might be, was marrying her for love, and for love alone.

So restless was she that, despite the quieting draught which the housekeeper had induced her to swallow, she could not sleep.

But one thing remained for her to do, and that was to get up and dress and go down to her father’s library and read herself into forgetfulness until day dawned.

Faynie acted upon the impulse, noting as she stepped from her room into the corridor that the clock on her mantel chimed the hour of two.

She had proceeded scarcely half a dozen steps ere she became aware that she was not alone in the corridor.

She stopped short.

The time was when Faynie would have shrieked aloud or swooned from terror; but she had gone through so many thrilling scenes during the last few weeks of her eventful young life that fear within her breast had quite died out.

Was it only her wild, fanciful imagination, or did she hear the sound of low breathing?  Faynie stood quite still, leaning behind a marble Flora, and listened.