“Then it wasn’t Mr. Grafton at all who made the trouble?” interrupted Marie.

“Mr. Grafton?  Why, no!  What could he have to do with it?”

“Oh, nothing.  We thought, at least Clarence thought, he made the trouble.”

Beth looked mystified, but Marie only continued in a softened tone: 

“I am afraid you don’t know your own heart, dear Beth.  You will come together again, and all will be forgotten.”

“No, Marie, never!  The past was folly.  All is better as it is.”

A pained look that Beth could not fathom drifted across Marie’s brow.  “You think so now, but you will change,” she said.

A knock at the door interrupted them just then, as Mrs. Owen announced a friend of Beth’s.

Marie kissed her gently.

“Good-bye, Beth,” she said in her sweet low voice, and there was a tender sadness in her dark eyes.  Beth did not know its meaning at the time, but a day was coming when she would know.

Beth saw nothing more of Clarence during his few days in the city.  She wondered sometimes if Marie had seen him, but though they saw each other occasionally during the rest of the winter, neither of them mentioned his name.

That week had seemed eventful in Beth’s eyes, but it was more eventful even than she thought.  The following Saturday, after tea, as Beth and Mabel Clayton were going back upstairs, Beth had seated Mabel by force on the first step of the second flight to tell her some funny little story.  Beth was in one of her merry moods that night.  Beth was not a wit, but she had her vein of mirth, and the girls used to say she was growing livelier every day.  The gas was not lighted in the hall, but Beth had left her door open and the light shone out on the head of the stairs.  A moment later they started up with their arms about each other’s waist.

“Oh, Beth, I left that note-book down stairs.  Wait, I’ll bring it up to you.”

Beth waited, standing in the light as her friend scampered down again.  She heard the door of Marie’s old room open, and a tall man stepped into the hall, but as it was dark below she could not see his face.  She wondered, though, why he stood so still, and she had a consciousness that someone was looking at her.

Arthur Grafton—­for it was he—­stood for a moment as if stunned.  There she was—­Beth Woodburn!  The woman he—­hush!  Clarence Mayfair’s promised wife!  She looked even beautiful as she stood there in the light, with a smile on her face and a pure white chrysanthemum at her throat.

“You needn’t hurry so, Mabel dear.  I can wait,” she said as her friend approached.