A blind chance at last brought about the fatal meeting between[Pg 31] Bonnibel Vere and Colonel Carlyle which Felise Herbert so greatly dreaded and deprecated.

As the autumn months merged into winter Bonnibel had developed a new phase of her trouble. A great and exceeding restlessness took possession of her.

She no longer moped in her chamber, thinking and thinking on the one subject that began to obscure even the memory of her Uncle Francis. She had brooded over Leslie's strange silence until her brain reeled with agony—now a strange longing for oblivion and forgetfulness took hold upon her.

"Oh! for that fabled Lethean draught which men drink and straightway all the past is forgotten!" she would murmur wildly as she paced the floor, wringing her beautiful hands and weeping. "Either Leslie has deserted me or he is dead. In either case it is wretchedness to remember him! Oh! that I could forget!"

Shrouded in her thick veil and long cloak she began to take long rambling walks every day, returning weary and fatigued, so that sleep, which for awhile had deserted her pillow, began to return, and in long and heavy slumbers she would lose for a little while the memory of the handsome artist so deeply loved in that brief and beautiful summer. Those days were gone forever. Her brief spring of happiness was over. It seemed to her that the only solace that remained to her weary heart was forgetfulness.

Once, rendered desperate by her suspense, she had written a letter to Leslie—a long and loving letter, full of tender reproaches for his silence, and containing the whole story of her uncle's tragic death. She had begged him to send her just one little line to assure her that she was not forgotten, and this beautiful little letter, filled with the pure thoughts of her innocent heart, she had directed to Rome, Italy.

No answer came to that yearning cry from the aching heart of the little wife. She waited until hope became a hideous mockery. She began to think how strange it was that she, little Bonnibel Vere, who looked so much like a child, with her short hair, and baby-blue eyes, was really a wife. But for the shining opal ring with its pretty inscription, "Mizpah," which Leslie had placed upon her finger that night, she would have begun to believe that it was all a fevered dream.

She was thinking of that ring one day as she walked along the crowded street, filled with eager shoppers, for Christmas was drawing near, and people were busy providing holiday gifts for their dear ones.

"Mizpah!" she repeated to herself, walking heedlessly along the wet and sleety pavement. "That means 'the Lord watch between thee and me while we are absent one from another.' Oh, Leslie, Leslie!"

Absorbed in painful thoughts she began to quicken her steps, quite forgetful of the thin sheet of ice that covered the pavement, and which required very careful walking. How it happened she could not think, but the next moment she felt one ankle twisting suddenly beneath her with a dreadful pain in it,[Pg 32] and found herself falling to the ground. With an exclamation of terror she tried to recover her balance, but vainly. She lay extended on the ground, her hat and veil falling off and exposing her beautiful pale face with its clustering locks of sunny hair.

People crowded around her immediately, but the first to reach her was a gentleman who was coming out of a jewelry store in front of which she had slipped and fallen.

He lifted her up tenderly, and a woman restored her hat and veil.

Bonnibel tried to stand upon her feet and thank them both for their timely aid.

To her terror a sharp twinge of pain in her ankle warned her that she could not stand upon it. She uttered a cry of pain and her blue eyes filled with quick tears.

"I—I fear my ankle is sprained," she said, "I cannot stand upon it."

"Never mind," said the gentleman, melted by the tears and the beauty of the sufferer. "Here is my carriage at the curbstone. Give me your address and I will take you home immediately."

Bonnibel was growing so faint from the pain of her sprained ankle that she could scarcely speak, but she murmured brokenly: "Fifth Avenue, number ——," and with a slight exclamation of surprise he lifted her into the carriage and gave the order to the driver.

She leaned her head back against the satin cushions of the carriage and closed her eyes wearily!

"I beg your pardon," said her companion's voice, arousing her suddenly from the deathly faintness that was stealing over her, "but I think you must be Miss Bonnibel Vere, Mrs. Arnold's niece. Perhaps you have heard her mention me. I am Colonel Carlyle."

Bonnibel opened her eyes with a start, and looked at him, instantly recalling the gossip of her maid, Lucy. So this was Colonel Carlyle, Felise Herbert's elderly lover. She gave him a quick, curious glance.
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