On the morning after the day fraught with so many events to the heiress of Redmon, the mother of the late heiress sat in the sitting-room of her pleasant seaside home, reading a novel. The firelight shone on her mourning-dress, but the inward mourning was not very profound. She had cried a good deal at first for the loss of her son and daughter; she cried sometimes still when people talked to her about them; but she cried quite as much over the woes of her pet heroes and heroines, bound in paper and cloth, and slept just as soundly, and took her meals with as good a relish as ever she had done in her life. Mrs. Marsh was not greatly given to borrowed trouble; she took the goods the gods provided, and let to-morrow take care of itself, so long as she had enough for to-day. Mr. Val Blake paid the butcher's, and baker's, and grocer's bills quarterly; settled with Betsy Ann, and Miss Jo saw that she was well dressed; and Mrs. Marsh took all as a matter of course, and I don't think even once thanked Mr. Blake for his kindness.

On this sunny spring morning Mrs. Marsh sat comfortably reading, so absorbed in her book as to be out of the reach of all mundane affairs. The book had a bright yellow cover, with a striking engraving of one man grasping another by the throat, and presenting a pistol at his head, and was called the "Red Robber of the Rocky Mountains"—a sequel to the "Black Brigand,"—when, just in the middle of a most thrilling chapter, Mrs. Marsh was disturbed by a knock at the front door. Betsy Ann answered the summons, and stood transfixed at the shining apparition she beheld. A beautiful young lady, with big black eyes, that shone on Betsy Ann like two black diamonds, arrayed in rustling silk, and a rich creamy crape shawl, with a bonnet fine enough for the queen of England, stood before her, asking, in a silvery voice, if Mrs. Marsh were at home. Standing before the door was a small open carriage, drawn by two milk-white ponies; and Miss Laura Blair sat within, nodding pleasantly to her, Betsy Ann, and holding the reins. The girl, quite dazzled by the splendor of this early visitor, ushered the radiant vision into the room where her mistress sat, and Mrs. Marsh arose with an exclamation of surprise she could not repress. They had met a few times before at the houses of mutual friends, but this was the young lady's first call.

"Miss Henderson," Mrs. Marsh stammered, utterly at a loss what to say—"I am sure I am very glad to see you; I have not had many visitors of late."

Tears rose to her eyes as she spoke, with the thoughts of the pleasant days gone by, when the friends of Nathalie and Charley, the friends of their prosperity, had made the cottage more gay with laughter and music. Miss Henderson was not looking at her, but into the red coal-fire.

"I have come on a little matter of business, Mrs. Marsh," she said. "I have come to fulfill a duty I owe to you. I know the story of the past, and, I am afraid, you must feel in some degree as if I had taken from you what should have been yours. Your—your daughter had no doubt a prior claim to what I now possess, and common justice requires you should not be defrauded. I am aware of Mr. Blake's great generosity, but the duty—and, I assure you, it is a pleasure to me—lies with me, not with him. I have, therefore, settled upon you, for life, an annuity of one hundred pounds per annum, which will be paid to you at my banker's, monthly or quarterly, as you may prefer. It was to say this I came so early this morning, but, if you will permit me, this visit shall be but the forerunner of many others."

She was standing up as she finished, with a look of intense relief at having accomplished her task, and Mrs. Marsh altogether too dazed and bewildered to utter a word.

"And I shall be very, very happy, my dear Mrs. Marsh," the heiress said, bending over her, and taking her hand, "if you will sometimes come up and see me. I have no mother, and I will look upon you as such, if you will let me."

Mrs. Marsh saw her go, feeling as though she were in a dream, or acting a chapter out of one of her own romances.

Miss Henderson took her place beside Laura in the pony carriage, and they drove slowly along Cottage Street, looking at the broad blue bay, sparkling in the sunshine, as if sown with stars. The beach, with its warm, white sands, edged the sea like a silver streak; and the waves sang their old music, as they crept up on its breast.

"How beautiful it all is!" the heiress cried, her dark face lighting up as it always did at sight of the ocean. "Let us get out, Laura; I could stay here listening to those sailors singing forever."

There were some idle boys at play on an old wharf, overgrown with moss and slimy seaweed, its tarry planks rotting in the sun.

Miss Henderson dropped a bright silver shilling into the dirty palm of one, and asked him to hold the ponies for ten minutes; and the two girls walked along the decaying and deserted old wharf together.

"My solemn Laura!" the heiress said, looking at her friend's grave face; "what a doleful countenance you wear! Of what are you thinking?"

"I am thinking of poor Nathalie Marsh," Laura answered; "it was on this very wharf she met her death, that wild, windy night. I have never been near the place since."

It is a remarkable trait of these swarthy faces that emotion does not pale them as it does their blonde neighbors—they darken. Miss Henderson's face darkened now—it always seemed to do so when the name of the dead girl was mentioned. She turned away from her friend, and stood staring moodily out to sea, until an exclamation from that young lady caused her to turn round and perceive that either the sea-wind or some other cause had very perceptibly heightened Miss Blair's color.

"I declare if that's not Val," Laura cried, "and that strange gentleman with him that came from New York the other day. There! they see us, and are coming here."

Miss Henderson looked indifferently as Mr. Blake and his friend approached. Val introduced his companion to the ladies as Mr. Paul Wyndham, of New York, and that gentleman was received graciously by Miss Blair, and coldly, not to say haughtily, by Miss Henderson.

The heiress did not like people from New York. She never talked about that city, if she could help it, and rather avoided all persons coming from it. She stood, looking vacantly out at the wide sea, and listening to the sailors' song, taking very little part in the conversation. She turned round, when the singing ceased, in the direction of her carriage, with a listless yawn she was at little trouble to suppress, and a bored look she took no pains to conceal. The gentlemen saw them safely off, and then loitered back to the old wharf.

"Well, Wyndham," Val asked, "and what do you think of the Princess of Speckport?"

Mr. Paul Wyndham did not immediately reply. He was leaning lazily against a rotten beam, lighting a cigar, for he was an inveterate smoker.

Mr. Wyndham was not handsome, he was not dashing—he had neither mustache nor whisker, nor an aquiline nose; and he could not dance or sing, or do anything else like any other young Christian gentleman. He was very slight and boyish of figure, with a pale, student-like face, a high forehead, deep-set eyes, a characteristic nose, and a thin and somewhat cynical mouth. There was character in everything about him, even in the mathematical precision of his dress, faultlessly neat in the smallest particular, and scrupulously simple. He looked like a gentleman and a student, and he was both. More, he was an author, a Bohemian, with a well-earned literary fame, at the age of seven-and-twenty. When he was a lad of seventeen he had started with his "knapsack on his back," containing a clean shirt, and a quire of foolscap, and had traveled through Europe and Asia, and had written two charming books of travel, that filled his pockets with dollars, and established his fame as an author. Since then he had written some half-dozen delightful novels, over which Laura Blair herself had cried and laughed alternately, although she did not know now that Mr. Wyndham and —— —— were one and the same. He had written plays that had run fifty nights at a time, and his sketches were the chief charm of one or two of the best American magazines. He was a poet, an author, a dramatist, sometimes an actor, when he took the notion, and a successful man in all. He looked as those inspired men who chain us with their wonderful word-painting should look, albeit I reiterate he was not handsome. He stood now leaning against the rotten beam, smoking his cigar, and looking dreamily over the shining sea, while Mr. Blake repeated his question.

"I say, Wyndham, how do you like her—the beauty, the belle, the Princess of Speckport?"

"She is a fine-looking girl," Mr. Wyndham quietly replied. "And those big black eyes of hers are very handsome, indeed. It strikes me I should like to marry that girl!"

"Yes," said Mr. Blake, composedly, "I dare say. I know several other gentlemen in Speckport who would like to do the same thing, only they can't, unfortunately."

"Can't they? Why?"

"Because there is an absurd law against bigamy in this province, and the young lady has promised to marry one man already."

"Ah! who is he?"

"Captain Cavendish. You met him yesterday, you remember. He proposed the other night at the house, and told me about it coming home. She accepted him; but the affair has not yet been made public, by the lady's express desire."

Mr. Wyndham took out his cigar, knocked off the ashes with the end of his little finger, and replaced it.

"Captain Cavendish is a lucky fellow," he said. "But yet I don't despair. Until the wedding-ring actually slips over the lady's finger, there is room for hope."

"But, my dear fellow, she is engaged."

"C'est bien! There is many a slip. I don't believe she will ever be Mrs. Cavendish."

Mr. Blake stared at his friend; but that gentleman looked the very picture of calm composure.

"My dear Wyndham," Mr. Blake remarked, compassionately, "you are simply talking nonsense. I know you are very clever, and famous, and all that sort of thing, and brain is excellent in its way; but I tell you it has no chance against beauty."

"By which you would imply, I stand no chance against Captain Cavendish. Now, if you'll believe me, I am not so sure of that. I generally manage to accomplish whatever I set my heart upon; and I don't think—I really don't, old boy—that I shall fail in this. Besides, if it does come to beauty, I am not such a bad-looking fellow, in the main."

To say that Mr. Blake stared after hearing this speech would be but a feeble description of the open-mouthed-and-eyed gape with which he favored its deliverer. To do Mr. Wyndham justice, he was that phenomenon not often seen—a modest author. He never bored his enemy about "My last book, sir!" he never alluded to his literary labors at all, unless directly spoken to on the subject; and certainly had never before displayed any vanity. Therefore, Mr. Blake stared, not quite decided whether he had heard aright; and Mr. Wyndham, seeing the look, did what he did not often do, burst out laughing.

"My dear old Val," he cried, slapping him on the shoulder, "I have not lost my senses; so there is no need of that look. I should like to have a tall wife—small men always do, you know—with black eyes and two hundred thousand dollars; and I shall enter the lists with this fascinating Captain Cavendish, and bear off the prize if I can, in spite of his sword, and uniform, and handsome face. I think, on the whole, I shall make the young lady quite as good a husband as he."

"Well," said Mr. Blake, drawing a long breath, and appealing to the deep, "for cool impudence and self-conceit, Paul Wyndham hasn't his match in broad America. Here he comes from New York; and before he is a week in the place he talks of marrying the richest and handsomest girl it contains, as coolly as if he were Sultan of all Turkey, and she a Circassian slave. Yes, Mr. Wyndham, ask her, by all means, and when you get your conge, let me know—it will be one of the happiest days of my life."

"But I don't think I shall get my conge" persisted Paul Wyndham. "Do you know if she is in love with this Captain Cavendish?"

"I never asked her," responded Mr. Blake. "I leave that for Mr. Wyndham to ascertain."

"Because I don't think she is," went on his friend. "When she stood here a few minutes ago, you and the other young lady, Miss—what's her name?—were talking of the gallant captain, and she listened with a face of perfect indifference. I was watching her, and I don't think she cares about him."

"I saw you watching her," said Val, "and so did she, and I don't think she liked it. I saw those black brows of hers contract once or twice, and that is an ominous sign with Miss Henderson."

"Miss Henderson could fly into a dickens of a passion, too, if she liked. Your black-eyed, black-haired, brown-skinned women raise the very old diable herself, if you stroke them the wrong way. They are something like big black cats. I tell you, Blake, I don't believe she cares about that military popinjay, Cavendish."

"Don't you," said Mr. Blake, with his hands in his pockets. "Of course, if you say so it must be so."

"No; but I really think so. Are his family anything in England?"

"It is currently believed he is next heir to a baronetcy. But the baronet got married in his old days, and there is a little shaver in petticoats to cut Master George out. Still, he lives in hope. The new baronet has the measles and the mumps, and the whooping-cough, and the scarlatina, and the chicken-pox, and a tribe of other diseases, his teeth included, to struggle through, before he reaches man's estate. There is no telling but Cavendish may be a baronet yet."

"That is it, then!" said Wyndham. "It is for his prospective baronetcy the girl has promised to marry him. Pride and ambition, the two sins that hurled Lucifer from heaven to hell, are strong in that woman."

"Oh, come now," said Val, starting up, "I think we had better get out of this, and drop the subject. It strikes me your language is rather forcible, Mr. Wyndham; and there is no telling what you may work yourself up to, if you keep on. It wouldn't be healthy for you, I'm thinking, if Miss Henderson heard you."

"Nevertheless," Paul Wyndham persisted, flinging away his smoked-out weed, "I shall marry Miss Henderson."

The two friends walked away together to the office in Queen Street—Mr. Blake disdaining all reply to the last remark.

On their way they met Captain Cavendish, mounted on his favorite bay, and looking the very beau ideal of a military rider, slowly cantering beside the pretty pony-carriage where the Princess of Speckport sat in state. The contrast between the handsome officer on horseback and the young author on foot was great; but Mr. Wyndham bowed to the soldier and his fair friends with undisturbed placidity.

"You see!" said Mr. Blake, significantly.

"I see," serenely answered Mr. Wyndham; "and I repeat. I shall marry Miss Olive Henderson!"

There was nothing at all of boasting in the tone of Mr. Paul Wyndham in saying this—simply one of deep, quiet determination. You had only to look at his face—that pale, steadfast face—if you were any judge of physiognomy, to perceive that his assurance to Mr. Blake, of seldom failing in any undertaking, was no idle bravado. He was one of those men of iron inflexibility, of invincible daring, of over mastering strength of will, bending all other wills to their own. Men of the Napoleon Bonaparte stamp, made to sway empires, and move about other men, kings and knights, queens and bishops, as they please, on the great chessboard of life. Mr. Val Blake, knowing Paul Wyndham, had some dim perception of this; but he knew, too, that Olive Henderson was no ordinary woman. He had a strong will, and so had she; but it was only a woman's will after all, and with it went womanly weakness, passion, and impulse, and the calm, passionless man was the master-mind.

"But I think she will baffle him here, after all," Mr. Blake said to himself, as he ceased thinking about the matter. "I don't believe Olive Henderson will ever marry Paul Wyndham, not but what he's a great deal better fellow than Cavendish, after all!"

It seemed as though he was right, for a whole week passed before Mr. Wyndham and Miss Henderson met again. The engagement of the heiress with Captain Cavendish, though not formally announced, was pretty generally known; and it was rumored that the wedding was to take place early in June. May had come in, draped in a sodden sheet of gray wet fog; but the villa at Redmon went steadily up, despite of wind and weather. Landscape-gardeners were turning the potato-patches and broad meadows and turnip-fields into a little heaven below, and the place was to be completed in July, when Mrs. Grundy said the happy pair would be returning from their bridal-tour, and take up their abode therein.

Mr. Paul Wyndham heard all this as he smoked his cigars and wrote away placidly at his new novel, and was in nowise disturbed. Mr. Val Blake heard it, and grinned as he thought of the egotistical young author getting baffled for once. Miss Henderson's innumerable admirers heard it, and gnashed their teeth with impotent, jealous fury, and, lastly, Miss Henderson herself heard it, and frowned and laughed alternately.

"This horrid gossiping town of yours, Laura!" she said impatiently; "how do they find out everything as soon as one knows it one's self, I wonder! I wish people would mind their own business and let me alone!"

"Great people must pay the penalty of greatness, my dear," Miss Blair answered, philosophically; "and, besides, it is only a question of time, so don't get into a gale about it! It doesn't matter much whether it is known this minute or the next."

The conversation between the young ladies took place in Miss Henderson's room, and while dressing for a ball. It was to be a very grand ball indeed, given by the officers, and to which only the tiptop cream of the cream of Speckport society was to be invited. Of course Miss Henderson was the first lady thought of, and of course her friend Miss Blair came next; but Mr. Val Blake, who didn't belong to the crÊme at all, was to be there too. But Mr. Blake was such a good fellow, and hand and glove with the whole barracks, and was so useful to puff their concerts and theatricals in the "Spouter," and praise the bass of Lieutenant the Honorable L. H. Blank, and the tenor-solo of Captain G. P. Cavendish, etc., etc., that it would have been an unpardonable breach to have omitted him. Mr. Paul Wyndham, whose fame as an author had by this time reached Speckport, was also to be there; and the ball was expected to be the most brilliant thing of the season.

As far as weather went, it was rather a failure already. The dismal, clammy fog had subsided at last into rain, and the rain lashed the windows of Miss Henderson's room, and the wind shrieked about the cottage, and roared out at sea as if bent on making a night of it. The heiress, with Rosie, the maid, putting the finishing touches to her toilette, stood listening to the storm, and drearily watching the reflection of her own face and figure in the tall glass. She had taken a fancy to be grandly somber to-night, and wore black velvet and the diamonds Speckport talked so much of, ablaze on throat and arms. There were blood-red flowers in her tar-black hair, and in her bouquet which lay on the dressing table, but she looked more superb in her sable splendor than ever.

Was Miss Laura Blair, with her commonplace prettiness of fair skin, pink cheeks, and waving brown hair, laying herself out as a foil to the black-eyed siren? She was dressed in white moire antique, gemmed with seed-pearls, and with a train of richness that swept half way across the room. She had white roses in her hair, on her breast, and in her bouquet. She wore pearl bracelets and necklace, and looked fair as a lily—a vivid contrast to her black and crimson neighbor.

Miss Henderson sent Rosie out of the room, and stood listening in silence for a while to the raging of the storm. Presently she turned to Laura, who was all absorbed settling her laces and jewels, with a rather singular inquiry on her lips.

"Laura," she said, abruptly, "what is the matter with me to-night? Why am I afraid to go to the ball?" Miss Blair turned round and gazed aghast at this question. The shadow that sometimes lay on her friend's face was there now, like a dark vail.

"Dear me, Olly! I'm sure I don't know what you mean! Afraid to go to the ball?"

"Yes," repeated Olive, "afraid! I feel as though something were going to happen! I have a presentiment that some misfortune is before me! I have had it all day!"

"It's the weather, dear," said Laura, retiring to the toilet, "or else it's indigestion. Don't be foolish!"

Olive Henderson was in no laughing humor, but she did laugh, half fretfully, though, at this reply. "It's not the weather, and it's not the indigestion, Miss Blair," she said, "it is the moral barometer giving warning of a coming storm—it is coming events casting their shadows before. I have half a mind not to go to the ball to-night."

"Nonsense, Olly!" exclaimed Laura, in some alarm, knowing very well Olive was just the girl not to go if she took it in her head, "how absurd you are. Presentiments! pooh! You've been reading some German trash—that's what you've been doing, and you have caught some absurd German silliness! I should like to see you try to stay away from the ball, the last, the best, the brightest of the season, and you looking divine, too, in that black velvet! What could possibly happen you at the ball, I should like to know?"

Miss Henderson and Miss Blair were rather late in arriving—nearly every one was there before them. There were two gentlemen who came considerably late, but no one noticed them much, being only Mr. Val Blake and his New York friend, Mr. Paul Wyndham. Mr. Blake was fond of dancing, and was captured by Miss Blair almost as soon as he entered, and led off; for Miss Laura did make love to this big stupid Val in pretty roundabout feminine fashion, as women have a way of doing all the world over. Mr. Wyndham did not dance, and as he was not at liberty to smoke, the ball was rather a bore than otherwise. He stood leaning against a pillar, watching the dancers; his pale, grave, quiet face and thoughtful gray eyes ever turned in one direction. A great many more gentlemen's faces turned presently in the same quarter, for the loadstone of the ball shone there, magnificent, in black velvet, and with eyes that outshone her diamonds. Was there rapport between them? Was it some inward magnetism that made the belle of the ball, in the height of her triumph and power, aware of this fixed, steadfast gaze, and uneasy under it? Flatterers and sycophants surrounded her on every hand, but she had to turn restlessly away from them and look over every now and then to that pale, watchful face, and those fixed, grave gray eyes.

Paul Wyndham still watched her. She grew nervously miserable at last, and enraged with herself for becoming so. If this strange man stared rudely, what was it to her? She would take no further notice of him, she would not look at him; and saying this to herself, she floated away in the waltz, with her eyes persistently fixed on her partner or on the floor.

The waltz concluded, and Miss Henderson, being tired and hot, her partner led her to a seat, and left her to get an ice. It was the first time all that evening she had been for a moment alone, and she lay back among the cushions of her chair and listened to the raging of the storm without.

The seat was in the recess of a bay window, partly shut out from the room by scarlet drapery, and she was glad to think she was alone. Alone! No, for there opposite to her stood Paul Wyndham, his magnetic eyes fixed with powerful intensity on her face. A cold thrill of fear, vague and chilling, crept through every vein—she would have risen, in undefined panic, but he was by her side directly, speaking quietly the commonest of commonplace words.

"Good evening, Miss Henderson. I trust I see you well and enjoying yourself. It is the first time I have had the pleasure of approaching you, you have been so surrounded all the evening."

She did not speak; a cold bend of the head answered him, and she rose up, haughty and pale. But he would not let her go; the power of his fixed gaze held her there as surely as if she had been chained.

"I fear," he said, in that quiet voice of his, "I fear you thought me rude in watching you, as I must own to having done. But I assure you, Miss Henderson, it was no intentional rudeness; neither was it my admiration, which, pardon me, is great! I watched, Miss Henderson, because I find you bear a most startling, a most wonderful resemblance to a person—a young girl—I once knew in New York."

She caught her breath, feeling the blood leaving her face, and herself growing cold. Paul Wyndham never took his pitiless eyes off her charming face.

"In saying I knew this young girl," he slowly went on, "I am wrong; I only saw her in the city streets. You came from New York, but you could not have known her, Miss Henderson, for she was abjectly poor. She lived in a mean and dirty thoroughfare called Minetta Street; she lodged in a house filled with rough factory-women, and kept by one Mrs. Butterby; and the young woman's name was Harriet Wade."

A moment after Mr. Wyndham said this, he came out of the curtained recess, and crossed the ballroom rapidly. On his way he met Laura Blair, and paused to speak.

"I am going for a glass of water," he said, "for Miss Henderson. I was talking to her at that window when she was taken suddenly ill. You had better go to her, Miss Blair. I am afraid she is going to faint."