I never think but to regret I know too much---- The hush and silence had fallen over the outer world beyond and about the great hotel, and something of its hush and mystery brooded too in the deserted corridors and vacated public rooms of the building itself. Perhaps one or two of its inmates--so strangely thrown together--would have given almost every earthly possession for the power to gaze unknown--unseen--into one of those locked chambers; a room where a woman sat alone, with all the light and laughter and mischief gone from her face, and the shadows of suffering and regret resting like somber memories in her veiled and sorrowful eyes. This was not Lady Francis as the world knew her--as the men whom she bewitched and tormented and flirted with in so audacious a fashion knew her. No, this was a woman maddened by self-reproach and unavailing regrets, fired with jealous hatred of a rival, and filled to the heart’s core with the memories and the longings that one voice, one face, alone in all the world had power to awaken, and had awakened to-day. She had thrown on a loose muslin wrapper, and the soft lace and pale tinted ribbons seemed to cling lovingly around the lissom figure, the snowy throat and arms. The long glass opposite reflected her as she raised her drooping head with its wreath of unbound hair, and the sorrowful eyes that met her own struck sharply on her senses as a surprise--so unlike they were to the eyes she was used to see. “Oh, what a fool I have been,” she cried, with an impatience and intolerance of herself that was the more maddening by reason of its vain remorse. “And yet I suppose I should do it again to-morrow under the same circumstances; yet, O Frank, Frank, how I loved you once--how you _seemed_ to love me!” She looked down again at the table by which she was seated. On it lay an open photograph case containing a photograph. The dark eyes smiled at her--the handsome, gay, young face looked radiant in its happy youth and supreme content with life. Her own intent gaze seemed to drink in thirstily every line, every feature, well as she knew them all. “He doesn’t look happy--now,” she said, and a little sob broke from her. Impatiently she closed the case, and began to pace up and down the room in a stormy, impetuous fashion--dashing the tears from her wet lashes, though they only thronged back fast and swift in very mockery of her efforts to deny their weakness.