* * * * *

Jordan King had never been more exacting as to his dressing than on that Saturday.  He studied his face in the glass after an orderly had shaved him, to make sure that the blue bloom it took but a few hours to acquire had been properly subdued.  He insisted on a particular silk shirt to wear under the loose black-silk lounging robe which enveloped him, and in which he was to be allowed to-day to lie upon the bed instead of in it.  His hair had to be brushed and parted three separate times before he was satisfied.

“I didn’t know I was such a fop,” he said, laughing, as Miss Dwight rallied him on his preparations for receiving the ladies.  “But somehow it seems to make a difference when a man lies on his back.  They have him at a disadvantage.  Now if you’ll just give me a perfectly good handkerchief I’ll consider that the reception committee is ready.  Thank you.  It must be almost time for them, isn’t it?”

For a young man who usually spent comparatively little of his time in attentions to members of the other sex, but who was accustomed, nevertheless, to be entirely at his ease with them, King acknowledged to himself that he felt a curious excitement mounting in his veins as the light footsteps of his guests approached.

Mrs. Burns came first into his line of vision, wearing white from head to foot, for it was early June and the weather had grown suddenly to be like that of midsummer.  Behind her followed not the black figure King’s memory had persistently pictured, but one also clad in white—­the very simple white of a plain linen suit, with a close little white hat drawn over the bronze-red hair.  Under this hat the eyes King remembered glowed warmly, and now there was health in the face, which was so much more charming than the one he recalled that for a moment he could hardly believe the two the same.  Yet—­the profile, as she looked at Mrs. Burns, who spoke first, was the one which had been stamped on his mind as one not to be forgotten.

She was looking at him now, and there was no pity in her bright glance—­he could not have borne to see it if it had been there.  She came straight up to the bed, her hand outstretched—­her gloves were in the other, as if she were on her way downstairs, as he presently found she was.  She spoke in a full, rich voice, very different from the weary one he had heard before.

“Do you know me?” she asked, smiling.

“Almost I don’t.  Have you really been ill, or did you make it all up?”

“I’m beginning to believe I did.  I feel myself as if it must be all dream.  How glad I am to find you able to be dressed.  Doctor Burns says you will go home to-day, too.”

“This evening, I believe.  I thought you were not going till then either.”

“This very hour.”  She glanced at Mrs. Burns.  “My good fairy begged that I might go early, because it is her little son’s birthday.  I am to be at a real party; think of that!”