After the marriage she continued her intimacy with Mrs. Thorne--and with Mr. Thorne. When clouds began to gather along the matrimonial horizon, and "rifts within the lute" to make discord of life's music, she beheld the one, and hearkened to the other with savage thrills of satisfaction. She did nothing to widen the breach--Norma was too proud to be a mischief-maker, but she did nothing to lessen it. She watched with sullen pleasure the cleft increase to a crack, the crack to a chasm. When the separation became an accomplished fact, it found Norma, of course, ranged strongly on the husband's side. During the year which had elapsed since Thorne's return from abroad, Norma had contrived to establish considerable influence over her cousin. She studied him quietly, and adapted herself to his moods, never boring him with an over-display of interest, never chilling him with an absence of it. Her plan was to make herself necessary to him, and in part she succeeded. Thorne, lonely and cut adrift, came more and more frequently to his aunt's house and exhibited more and more decidedly his preference for his cousin's society. The thin end of the wedge was in, and but for the move to Virginia, and its ill-starred consequences, the inevitable result must have followed. Would it follow now? A vision of Pocahontas, with her fair face, and her sweet gray eyes framed in a soft cloud of white, standing on the lower step of the stairway, with Thorne beside her, his head bent low over the hand he clasped, rose before Norma's eyes and caused them to burn with jealous anger. Here was the old thing repeating itself; here was flirtation again, the exact extent of which she could not determine. It must be stopped at once, trampled out ere the flame should do irremediable damage. But how? With the question came the answer. Norma was sure that, as yet, no knowledge of Thorne's marriage had ever reached Pocahontas. She would enlighten her; and in such a way that, if there had been aught of love-making on the gentleman's part (and Norma, knowing her cousin, thought it probable there had been), every look and word and tone should seem a separate insult.