Her lips curved in that hard smile that could make even Mrs. Trelane shrink. She rose and put on a thick dressing-gown. As calmly as if it were broad daylight, and the proper time for sewing, Miss Trelane opened a locked drawer, and took out a roll of material she had been at some pains to obtain. She got down on the floor and cut out and sewed hard for the next two hours, not that there was any haste to complete her task, but for the solace of the effort. The thick softness of the white satin she was working with made her frown with some emotion that she fought down, for she thought of the dress that she would never wear standing at the altar with the man she loved. “Well, I can bear it as other women have before!” she thought grimly, sewing with firm, practical fingers. “Thank fortune, all this wants is good, solid basting that can’t come out! I would find no joy in sewing my fingers off, even to get a hold on Marcus Wray.” She gave a little stretch of fatigue, and surveyed her work when the last stitch was in. Then she let her dressing-gown slip off her lovely shoulders, and put on the dress she had so hastily run together. “Lucky I haven’t to powder my hair!” she thought, as she piled it high on her head deftly, without going near the glass. “Powder dropped on Miss Le Marchant’s red felt stair carpets would be too remarkable even for Thomas!” She stooped as she spoke, took a filmy white scarf, yards long, from the open dresser, and put it over her head and round her slim body, leaving the long wide ends to float gauzily behind her as she walked over to the long glass set in her wardrobe. And even she was startled at what she saw in the light of the nearly burned-out candles. Tall and strangely slender in the short-waisted, tight-skirted gown, that clung to her shape, her pale face ghostly under the filmy crape that veiled it, only her eyes burning dark, fiery, and revengeful, to give it any semblance of life, she stood the living image of the pictured woman up-stairs. In her bare feet she moved to and fro in front of the glass, till she learned a movement that made her look as if she floated rather than walked. “That is all right, I think!” she mused. “Thomas and Jessie are the only people I should ever be in danger of meeting, and I think I am quite enough to make them howl and run, without stopping to investigate. But as things are now I don’t feel so much interest in sneaking round at night, trying to catch Marcus out. My parent’s neck and my own happiness seem a trifle more important.”