He passed his warm hands caressingly over my hair and across my cheek, and then he was gone, and I sat down alone to think it all over, and wonder if it really was Tom who had been there, or if it was a dream from which I should awaken. Naturally too, I followed him in imagination to the dinner, and saw Miss Lucy in her blue silk with white roses in her hair, and to my very finger tips I felt how Tom must be impressed with the difference between her high-bred grace and ease of manner, and the little shrinking woman in faded gray, with worn out, leaky boots. I did not take them off, but held them to the fire and watched the steam as it came from the soles, and rather enjoyed my poverty and loneliness, and thought hard things against Miss Elliston, who had known I was at the hotel and had never spoken to me. I must have fallen asleep while I thought, and the fire was out, and the clock striking twelve when I awoke, chilled in every limb, with a dull, heavy pain in the back of my head, and a soreness in my throat. I remember going to the window and looking out into the foggy night, and wondering if the grand dinner was over, and how soon Tom would come again. Then I crept shivering to bed, and when I woke the Misses Keith were all in my room, together with Mrs. Trevyllan, and I heard them say: “Twelve pairs of boots for her to try, with orders to keep them all if they fit. He is very generous.” Then I knew that somebody had sent me a box of beautiful French gaiters, and it made me so tired to think of wearing them all at once, as I thought I must, that I gave a weary sigh, which brought the ladies instantly to my side with anxious inquiries as to how I felt, and where I was the sickest. “Not sick at all,” I said, “only tired, and cold, and sleepy. Please go away with the dinners, and boots, and Toms, and leave me alone. I want to sleep it out.” “Poor girl, she’s out of her head,” I heard one of them say, and then I slept again, how long I do not know, but when I woke a curious thing seemed to have happened, which yet did not surprise me in the least. I, Norah Burton, was hidden away in the deep window seat, where, myself unseen, I could command a view of the bed, which had been brought from the little recess, and now occupied the center of my room. On that bed, with a face as white as the pillows, save where the fever spot burned on either cheek, somebody was lying—somebody who looked like me, and yet was not I, though they called her Norah, and talked in whispers about the long strain upon her nerves, being so much alone; the long walk in the November mist and fog before she was able, and the repeated wetting of her feet from the want of strong, new shoes. How queerly it all sounded; how curiously I watched the girl, who looked so young, lying there so still, with her hands folded always the same way, just over her breast, and her face turned a little toward me.