She took a chair near the open door and bent forward with an air of attention that was disquieting. She wore black—perhaps to fit her the better into the house of a somber Sisterhood. I seemed suddenly to remember her from a time long gone, and the effort of memory threw me off guard. Stoddard had said there were several Olivia Armstrongs ; Marian Devereuxs. The silence grew intolerable; she there were certainly many was waiting for me to speak, and I blurted :

“I suppose you have come to take charge of the property.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“And you came back with the executor to facilitate matters. I’m glad to see that you lose no time.”

“Oh !” she said lingeringly, as though she were finding with difficulty the note in which I wished to pitch the conversation. Her calmness was maddening.

“I suppose you thought it unwise to wait for the bluebird when you had beguiled me into breaking a promise, when I was trapped, defeated,—”

Her elbow on the arm of the chair, her hand resting against her cheek, the light rippling goldenly in her hair, her eyes bent upon me inquiringly, mournfully,— mournfully, as I had seen them—where ?—once before ! My heart leaped in that moment, with that thought.

“I remember now the first time !” I exclaimed, more angry than I had ever been before in my life.

“That is quite remarkable,” she said, and nodded her head ironically.

“It was at Sherry’s; you were with Pickering—you dropped your fan and he picked it up, and you turned toward me for a moment. You were in black that night; it was the unhappiness in your face, in your eyes, that made me remember.”

I was intent upon the recollection, eager to fix and establish it.

“You are quite right. It was at Sherry’s. I was wearing black then; many things made me unhappy that night.”

Her forehead contracted slightly and she pressed her lips together.

“I suppose that even then the conspiracy was thoroughly arranged,” I said tauntingly, laughing a little perhaps, and wishing to wound her, to take vengeance upon her.

She rose and stood by her chair, one hand resting upon it. I faced her; her eyes were like violet seas. She spoke very quietly.

“Mr. Glenarm, has it occurred to you that when I talked to you there in the park, when I risked unpleasant gossip in receiving you in a house where you had no possible right to be, that I was counting upon something,—foolishly and stupidly,—yet counting upon it ?”

“You probably thought I was a fool,” I retorted.