"This way, Varrick," he called cheerily from the door-way; and a moment later Varrick was hurried into the coupe, which had just drawn up to the curbstone, and, with Maillard seated beside him, was soon whirling in the direction of the Northrup mansion to which a servant admitted them. Maillard thrust aside the heavy satin _portieres_ of the drawing-room, gently pushed his friend forward, and Hubert felt the heavy silken draperies close in after him. Through the half gloom he saw a slender figure flying toward him, and he heard a voice, the sound of which had been dear to him in the old days that were past and gone, crying out: "Oh, Hubert! Hubert!" and in that instant Gerelda was in his arms. Insensibly his arms closed around her; but there was no warmth in the embrace. She held up her lovely face to be kissed, and he bent his handsome head and gave her the caress she coveted; but for him was gone all the old rapture that a kiss from those flower-like lips would have brought. By Hubert Varrick, at this moment, it was given only from a sense of duty, as love for Gerelda had died. "Oh, Hubert, Hubert! my darling!" she cried, "is it not like heaven to be united again?" She would not notice his coldness; for Gerelda Northrup had laid the most amazing plan that had ever entered a woman's head. Immediately upon her dismissal from the Varrick mansion she had stolen back to the little hamlet where her old nurse lived, and had got the woman to write a letter for her as she dictated it. She had said to herself that Hubert Varrick should be hers again, at whatever cost, and that she might as well force him by any means that lay in her power into a betrothal with herself again, as long as he was not married to another. He should never know that she knew of his change of heart. She would meet him and greet him as her betrothed lover, whom she was soon to marry, and he would have to be a much smarter man than she took him to be if he could find any way out of it. She had caused the nurse to write a similar letter to her mother; and when her mother read it, and realized that her daughter had not eloped, she received her back joyfully and with open arms. If an angel from heaven had told her that her daughter had stolen back to the city in disguise, and had been residing under the Varrick roof, she would have declared that it was false--a mad prevarication. Mrs. Northrup was overjoyed to have the sunshine of her home, her darling daughter, back again. With almost her first breath, after she had kissed her rapturously, she told her that she had seen very little of Hubert Varrick, and that he had never crossed the threshold since that fatal night on which he believed that his bride to be had eloped from him. CHAPTER XV. "HUBERT CARES FOR ME NO LONGER," SOBBED THE GIRL.