He rested his head against the framework of the window, and gazed abstractedly into the deserted street. The moon had risen in full majesty, and was flooding every place with silver light. A party of young men came along the pavement arm in arm, singing, as the students in “Faust” came along that memorable night. Paul Desfrayne listened. The music was familiar to him; the words he knew well, and could distinguish them. The first time Paul Desfrayne had heard Lucia Guiscardini sing upon the stage, she had sung those verses. They haunted him yet. They now brought back memories steeped in pain and bitterness. Wearied in body, sick at heart, he closed the window to shut out those distasteful strains, and went with slow steps to his bedroom. CHAPTER X. BUILDING ON SAND. Mrs. Desfrayne felt much as Alnaschar is described to have felt when he found his radiant visions at an end. She had built up a perfect Aladdin’s Palace of bright and fairy enjoyment, and now it had faded completely. She was endowed with a lively imagination, and had rapidly conjured up dreams as charming as they were baseless, like a boarding-school girl building up a delicious _château d’Espagne_ with enameled bits of painted cardboard. She had never liked the quiet, graceful girl who was such a favorite with Lady Quaintree, and now she was in a fair way to hate her. What, perhaps, angered her more than anything else was that this girl should, of all others, have been selected by some one totally unknown to her to be her son’s wife. She had no desire that Paul should marry, though she had a vague idea that she would be glad if he discovered some wealthy and beautiful heiress, and was successful in his suit. Jealous of any creature who might threaten to divide with her the affections of her beloved child, the thought that Lois Turquand should be her rival was gall and wormwood. But she was keenly disappointed in her airy hopes and expectations, raised on a foundation of sand as they had been, with no knowledge whatever of the circumstances of the case. Like some foolish women, and also some silly men, she had a most objectionable habit of judging and trying cases by the aid of imagination alone, unassisted by common sense, and she was now suffering under a result which a cooler head might have anticipated as just possible. The more she thought about the matter, the more angry and disappointed she became. Indeed, she reasoned herself into the notion that she had been badly used somehow by somebody in some way, and resented her injuries accordingly. Miss Turquand had possessed one friend more in the world than she deemed herself entitled to count. She had now one enemy more since her sudden rise to fortune. Of Mrs. Desfrayne Miss Turquand was certainly not thinking at this exciting period.