All unheeded and unnoted by its object, Mrs. Stuart's angry glance dwelt on Irene. The girl was so absorbed in her own sad thoughts that the ripple of talk and laughter in the room seemed to flow past her like a dream so faint and far-away it sounded. A feeling of utter loneliness and pain, of vague longing and sharp regret possessed her. Only half conscious of outward things she leaned against the window mournfully musing. Suddenly to her dulled senses penetrated the noise of a somewhat unusual bustle in the room, the rustle of a silken robe as its wearer hastily rose, and a sharp cry of wonder and surprise in the voice of Mrs. Leslie: "Mr. ----!" Irene lost the name in her apathy. "_Can_ this be you, or am I dreaming?" "I heard at Florence that you were here, Mrs. Leslie, and I could not resist the temptation of calling," said a deep, sweet, musical voice. That voice! Every drop of blood in Irene's heart seemed to answer it! It shocked her out of her apathetic sorrow. She would have cried out in the suddenness of her surprise, but her lips were parched and dry, her tongue failed her. Instinctively she shrank further into the shadow and turned her head toward the sound. Her heart had not deceived her. The world had never held but one voice that could stir the secret depths of her heart. And this was _he_! She had thought him dead-- "Down by the reefs and the shells Far down by the channels that furrow the dolorous deep, Where the torn sails rise with the swells, And swing in the pulse of the sea. Silently sleeping his sleep Down in the sorrowful sea." But there he stood--tall, large, handsome, with that easy, gracious, indolent air she recalled so well--a smile on his lips as he replied to Mrs. Leslie's eager questions and exclamations. Then Irene, watching with startled eyes, saw and heard the hum of greetings and introductions. Even Mrs. Stuart unbent from her supercilious hauteur to do honor to the stranger. She had heard of him, and knew that he was well-born and wealthy. "What shall I do? Will he know me?" Irene asked herself, with a great suffocating heart-beat. She saw Mrs. Leslie coming to the window with her friend, and nerved herself for the ordeal. Her thoughts flew confusedly back over the past. How strangely they had parted, how strangely they were meeting. Mrs. Leslie pushed back the rich lace curtain with her white, ringed hand, and showed the beautiful, silent, statue-like girl. "Miss Berlin, allow me to present my friend, Mr. Kenmore, the dead-alive," she said, smilingly. CHAPTER XXXIII. There was one instant of breathless silence as Mrs. Leslie's kind introductory words thus fell on the ears of the husband and wife, who until that moment had believed the other dead. Then, with a great effort of will Irene raised her pale face and dark blue eyes to meet Guy Kenmore's gaze.