I shall never see him again—­and it is best for me that I shall not.  What can I hope from a man who never once noticed me?  But I should like to hear that he had recovered his health and his tranquillity, and that his life was a happy one.  It has been a comfort to me, Adelaide, to open my heart to you.  I am get ting bold enough to confess everything.  Would you laugh at me, I wonder, if I—?”

She stopped.  Her pale complexion softly glowed into color; her grand dark eyes brightened—­she looked her loveliest at that moment.

“I am far more inclined, Stella, to cry over you than to laugh at you,” said Lady Loring.  “There is something, to my mind, very sad about this adventure of yours.  I wish I could find out who the man is.  Even the best description of a person falls so short of the reality!”

“I thought of showing you something,” Stella continued, “which might help you to see him as I saw him.  It’s only making one more acknowledgment of my own folly.”

“You don’t mean a portrait of him!” Lady Loring exclaimed.

“The best that I could do from recollection,” Stella answered sadly.

“Bring it here directly!”

Stella left the room and returned with a little drawing in pencil.  The instant Lady Loring looked at it, she recognized Romayne and started excitedly to her feet.

“You know him!” cried Stella.

Lady Loring had placed herself in an awkward position.  Her husband had described to her his interview with Major Hynd, and had mentioned his project for bringing Romayne and Stella together, after first exacting a promise of the strictest secrecy from his wife.  She felt herself bound—­doubly bound, after what she had now discovered—­to respect the confidence placed in her; and this at the time when she had betrayed herself to Stella!  With a woman’s feline fineness of perception, in all cases of subterfuge and concealment, she picked a part of the truth out of the whole, and answered harmlessly without a moment’s hesitation.

“I have certainly seen him,” she said—­“probably at some party.  But I see so many people, and I go to so many places, that I must ask for time to consult my memory.  My husband might help me, if you don’t object to my asking him,” she added slyly.

Stella snatched the drawing away from her, in terror.  “You don’t mean that you will tell Lord Loring?” she said.

“My dear child! how can you be so foolish?  Can’t I show him the drawing without mentioning who it was done by?  His memory is a much better one than mine.  If I say to him, ’Where did we meet that man?’—­he may tell me at once—­he may even remember the name.  Of course, if you like to be kept in suspense, you have only to say so.  It rests with you to decide.”

Poor Stella gave way directly.  She returned the drawing, and affectionately kissed her artful friend.  Having now secured the means of consulting her husband without exciting suspicion, Lady Loring left the room.