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74 A DREADFUL TEMPTATION.
“Yes, she returned in my care. She was a helpless young >
widow,” said Howard, evasively, ‘‘She lost all her friends
in Europe.” ; ety
Then other friends claimed him, and he turned away.
‘““So Mr. Templeton is an old acquaintance of yours, Mrs. |
St. John?”
‘“‘-Yeg: he was my late husband’s nephew,” sheanswered, /
with languid indifference. won
He saw that she did not care to pursue the subject. | .
‘* Tt puzzled me when I first saw you to-night that I could
f
said; ‘‘but since I have so unexpectedly met with my fel-
low-voyager, Howard Templeton, I distinctly recall the.
not account for the strange familiarity of your face,” he
reason. Youare singularly like a lady who traveled in his |
care—your very height, your very features; though, as I
remember now, very different inexpression. She appeared —
almost heart-broken; yet she was very beautiful. [need ©
not tell you that, though, since I have already said she
looks like you,” he added, with an admiring bow.
“What was her name?” asked Mrs. St. John, eagerly,
quite oblivious of the delicate compliment. . |
“Thave forgotten it,” said Lord Dudley. ‘Forgetting
names ig a weakness of mine. Yet I remember that Tem- |
pleton called her by her Christian name—a very soft and
sweet one. . Let me see—Laura, perhaps.”
Xenie sat silent and thoughtful. There was a strange »
pain at her heart. She could not understand it.
‘Tt cannot be that I'am sorry he is living,” she said to
herself. ‘‘My triumph is greater than if he were dead. He ~
knows that I have my sweet revenge. It was never sweet
until I. knew him living to feel its pangs! For all his -
haughty bearing it must be that he feels it in all its bitter-
ness.” a
Then a sudden irrelevant thought flashed across these
self-congratulations.
‘‘T wonder who that Laura can be? Is hein love with
her?”
It was the most natural thought in the world for a :
woman; yet she pnt.it away from her with a sort of angry
impatience.
“What if he does love her?” she thought, scornfully -
‘“He cannot marry. her.. He is a beggar. .I have stripped
him of everything. She will leave him for lack of gold, as ©
he left me. Then he may feel something of what I suffered .
through his sin!”
And she felt ¢ladder than ever before at the thought of
Howard Templeton’s poverty. .She knew that he could not .
marry the girl for whom he said he would have lost his own
life—that beautiful, mysterious Laura,