Then they were silent for a time. The idle loiterers on the beach, the casual passers by turned twice to look at the two fair women, so beautiful, so unlike in their beauty--Beatrix so lily-fair with her large blue eyes and pale-gold tresses; Laurel with her rare, unusual type of beauty, her dark eyes, her blonde skin, her burnished hair; the one in her dress of deep, lusterless black silk, the other in something white and soft and clinging, marvelously becoming to her graceful style. "Shall you be long at the seaside?" Laurel inquired, presently. "A few weeks--that is all," Beatrix replied. "Mr. Wentworth is in New York--business, you know, Mrs. Lynn--Trixy and I cannot stay long away from him." "You are fond of him?" said Laurel, turning her large, wistful eyes on the other's tender face. The tenderness deepened in Mrs. Wentworth's sweet blue eyes, and around her gentle lips. "You would think so if you knew the story of our marriage," she said. "Ours was a real love-match, Mrs. Lynn. It was most romantic. Some day, when I know you better I will tell it to you. It would furnish you a plot for a novel." Laurel turned her head aside and set her lips in a tense, hard line. She remembered how the story had been told her a few weeks ago in that green city of the dead beside the grave where the unknown waif lay under the name of Laurel Le Roy. "God forbid that I should have to hear the story told again," she murmured to herself. She looked back at Mrs. Wentworth and said, calmly, and even smilingly: "It is very pleasant to hear of a real love-match in real life. I suppose you are very happy, Mrs. Wentworth?" "Yes, I am very happy with my noble husband," Beatrix said, thoughtfully. "But my happiness was purchased at a bitter cost to another. I know what it is to feel the sharp sting of remorse, Mrs. Lynn." Little Trixy came up with a beautiful shell and claimed her mother's attention. They went away together presently, and left Laurel to her own reflections. They were very sweet and noble ones. She was thinking of the Gordons--longing to reconcile them to their daughter and her husband. "I am glad that she is happy with her husband," mused Laurel. "Oh, how differently our girlish conspiracy resulted for her and for me. And yet--would I change places with her? No, hers be the pleasure, mine the pain." She walked slowly back to the hotel, leaving Laurie at play with his nurse on the shell-strewn beach. In the hotel corridor she encountered some new arrivals, ladies and gentlemen, going to their rooms. Quite oblivious of their interested, admiring stare, she passed on, and took no note of the pretty, painted blonde face that whitened beneath all her rouge as she stared aghast, and murmured, huskily: "Is it Laurel Vane or her ghost? I never saw such a terrible likeness!" CHAPTER LIX. Was it chance or fate that brought Mr. Gordon down, a few weeks later, to consult with Mrs. Lynn about the publication of her new book?