“Ah, yes—excuse me—you are cousins, I presume. Huntress once told me that he was reared by an uncle. I am sorry, upon my word,” he went on, with an appealing look, “if our singular resemblance has caused you any annoyance to-day; pray think no more of it since it was a very natural mistake. We are often addressed by each other’s name—indeed, we are known at Yale as ‘the mysterious double.’” All the time the young man was speaking he was closely observing the young girl. He had noticed her fluctuating color when she spoke of Geoffrey; he remarked the tender inflection of her voice as she uttered his name, and how eager she had been to correct his mistake in supposing them to be brother and sister. “They are cousins—perhaps not first cousins, either, and the girl loves him,” he said to himself. “Of course he returns her affection—no fellow in his senses could help it. I wonder how it would work if I should try my own luck in this direction. I have never paid off that old grudge against him, and this would be a fine way to settle it.” But Gladys, all unconscious of this secret plotting against her own and Geoffrey’s happiness, looked up with a merry smile at his words to her, and remarked: “The resemblance is surely very striking, although your voices are unlike. I knew the moment you spoke that I had made a mistake, and my apparent rudeness must have been quite startling to you,” she concluded, coloring again as she remembered how eagerly she had approached him and laid her hand upon his arm. “No, indeed; you are very hard upon yourself, Miss Huntress. Believe me I shall consider the incident a most fortunate circumstance if I may be allowed to consider it as a formal introduction to you, and thus secure the pleasure of your acquaintance.” He was so gentlemanly and affable, so refined in his language and manner, that Gladys thought him very agreeable, and, since he claimed to know Geoffrey, she thought there could be no possible harm in receiving him as an acquaintance. Still she was not quite sure that it would be proper, and this made her a little guarded in her reply. “I am always glad to meet any of Geoffrey’s friends,” she said, with one of her charming smiles; but if she could have known how he cringed under her words, and what venomous hatred was rankling in his heart against him who was her ideal of all manly excellence, she would have fled from him in dismay. But nothing of this nor of the miserable plot which was rapidly taking form in his mind appeared on the surface, while before he could frame a suitable reply Gladys turned quickly and drew Addie Loring to her side, saying: “Allow me to introduce my friend—Miss Loring, Mr. Mapleson.” He lifted his hat in acknowledgment of the presentation while he was still inwardly chafing over that last guarded speech of hers.