"You need not threaten me, Clarice," she said, with girlish dignity. "I have laid no plans--not one. I have not thought about the future. I only could not bear to go away. I know Mr. Le Roy could never think of me--_that way!_ I--have never even dreamed of it. Do not judge me so harshly, Clarice. Remember how young I am. Is it strange that I should love the only happy home I ever had?" Clarice could not resist her beauty, her pleadings, her distress. She smoothed the golden hair tenderly, and kissed the white hands, and admitted that she was sorry for Laurel Vane. But she said to herself, all the same, that she was acting wrong in leaving the girl at Eden in her borrowed plumes. Harm would come of it--harm to the beautiful, willful creature who was so blindly rushing upon her fate. That evening Laurel told Mrs. Le Roy that Clarice had received an offer to accompany a lady to Europe, and that the girl had determined to accept it, and would leave her on the next day to go to New York. "You shall have my own maid to help you every day until you find a new one," said Mrs. Le Roy, cordially: and Laurel, thanking her, said that she did not require the services of a maid very much, and she would not engage another until she returned to New York. Clarice Wells went away the next morning full of joy at the prospect before her, but regretful at leaving Laurel. She fancied that the girl would fare but ill at the hands of the Le Roys when they found her out. Laurel sent the beautiful pearls, Mrs. Gordon's gift, to Beatrix Wentworth with her love and best wishes. The maid declined to take the new hats and dresses to her mistress. "You will need them if you are going to keep up this masquerade," she said. "And when they turn you adrift upon the world you can sell them for money to buy food and shelter." She went away, and in the new loneliness that fell upon her, Laurel Vane began to realize dimly to what imminent perils she had willfully committed herself. CHAPTER XVIII. Clarice had barely gone a week, when one evening Mrs. Le Roy came sailing into the dressing-room, whither Laurel had gone to dress for dinner, but was dreaming instead at the open window. "My dear, we have company from New York," she said, rather abruptly. Laurel started and turned a pale, frightened face toward the lady. "New York," she faltered, tremblingly, with her heart on her lips. A moment ago she had been careless, almost light hearted, as she leaned from the window and watched the shadows of twilight falling on the river and the beautiful grounds. She had inhaled the flower-scented air with something like delight. She had been murmuring to herself some pretty lines of Jean Ingelow's: