“’Tis no easy matter, as most authors know, To coin pleasant thoughts from the mind’s full mint; And then, after all, he must ask no pay, But be satisfied merely to see it in print.” He wished with all his heart that the girl he loved so well had married some man more worthy of her than Raymond Challoner, the libertine and gambler. He turned the chair around. He had always imagined himself a brave man; now he knew that he had not the control over himself that he had imagined. “Fool that I am, I would give ten years of my life to live those three blissful weeks at Newport over again,” he muttered sadly and hoarsely. “I feel so unnerved that I almost wish that I could find some excuse for leaving this house without seeing Jess; but that cannot be, I suppose, for that must be Mrs. Trevalyn’s step which I hear in the corridor.” With a heavy sigh he crushed back the unhappiness that had swept over his heart, and summoned by a mighty effort the calm expression which had become habitual to his face, and the coldness to his eyes. It was not an instant too soon, however, for at that moment the portières before the door were swept back by a white, jeweled hand. CHAPTER XXXVIII. AT HIS FEET. “Can I behold thee, and not speak my love? E’en now, thus sadly, as thou standst before me, Thus desolate, dejected, and forlorn, Thy softness steals upon my yielding senses, Until my soul is faint from grief and pain.” --ROWE. When the servant took Mr. John Dinsmore’s card to his mistress, he found that lady sitting moodily alone before the sea-coal fire which burned brightly in the grate. “A caller, on such a day, and at such an hour,” she muttered quite below her breath, as she took the card from the silver tray. One glance at the superscription which the bit of pasteboard bore, and she fell back in her chair, almost fainting from sheer terror. The question of the servant, who was regarding her critically, aroused her to her senses. He was saying: “Are you out, or in, my lady?” The color rushed back to her face, and the lifeblood to her heart. “What a fool I am,” she told herself, a frown gathering upon her face. “It is Raymond Challoner, of course, as he is now masquerading under the name. Of course I might have expected this, but, nevertheless, it shocked me.’ But aloud she said: “I will see the gentleman.” When the man had departed she arose slowly to her feet, ruminating: “As he is impatient, I will not keep him waiting; but he will not relish the message which I bring him from the obstinate little Jess, that she positively refuses to see him, despite all my pleading with her. Raymond Challoner is not quite the lady-killer that he imagines himself to be.” Despite the fact that she prided herself upon her beauty, and always looking her best on every occasion, she did not even glance at the long French mirror as she swept past it.