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.