me now as if I were your brother, and give me a sister's kiss. Would you
see Arthur?"

She trembled and whispered painfully:

"No, Harold, no--I dare not. Oh, Harold, bid him forget me."

"It is better that you should not see him. Farewell! be brave. We are
good friends, remember. Farewell, dear girl."

Beverly had been waiting with the carriage, and as the time was short,
he called to Harold. Arthur, who stood at the carriage wheel, simply
raised his hat to Oriana, as if in a parting salute. He would have given
his right hand to have pressed hers for a moment; but his will was iron,
and he did not once look back as the carriage whirled away.




CHAPTER X.


In the drawing-room of an elegant mansion in a fashionable quarter of
the city of New York, toward the close of April, a social party were
assembled, distributed mostly in small conversational groups. The head
of the establishment, a pompous, well-to-do merchant, stout, short, and
baldheaded, and evidently well satisfied with himself and his position
in society, was vehemently expressing his opinions upon the affairs of
the nation to an attentive audience of two or three elderly business
men, with a ponderous earnestness that proved him, in his own