"I thought of telling Nadine that, but you know what a fury she is. Why, she would almost kill me, I believe, if she once got an inkling that I knew about it.
"Well, to make a long story short, it so chanced that he happened along our street every night after that, and always found me, quite by chance, sitting out on the steps, and so he stopped for a chat. And now comes the most wonderful part of the affair. He is no real street-car conductor at all. I don't mean just that, but – oh, Jess! this is what I mean: he – he bet with a number of young gentlemen the last election and lost the wager. If he lost he was to come to New York and be a street-car conductor for three months, and that is what he did. He is a young lawyer in a small town near here, and has great expectations, he says.
"His time will be up to-morrow, Jessie, and then he is going back to his home, and – and I shall never see him again. He is like a prince in disguise – such as we read about. I always thought him too grand and polite to be only a street-car conductor."
Jessie Staples felt greatly relieved in her heart that he was going away so soon, but she was too wise to say so to Dorothy, knowing that if one attempts to break up an infatuation on the part of a girl of that age, ten to one it makes matters only worse.
"Life will never be the same to me after Harry Langdon goes, for, Jessie, I – I have learned to care for him. I couldn't help myself though I tried hard not to, and to be gay and jolly before all the girls. But, oh, Jessie, pity me! My heart is breaking! I wish I could die!"
They did not notice, as they moved on, that the door near where they had stood talking was partly ajar, nor did they see the girl who had paused in the entry outside almost at the very beginning of their conversation. It was Nadine Holt, and she had heard every word, from beginning to end, that Dorothy had uttered; and even after they had passed on she stood there, cold and motionless as a statue cut in marble.
"Great God in heaven! this explains Harry Langdon's sudden coolness," she muttered, with a great, choking sob; "but if Dorothy Glenn attempts to take my lover from me – let her beware! this earth will not be broad enough to hold the two of us. It will be war to the very death between us, and we shall see which one of us shall win him!"
By a violent effort Nadine controlled her wild grief and passed into the work-room. It was only her indomitable pride that kept her from taking her hat and sacque and going straight home and to her bed, there to weep her very heart out – aye, weep her very life out, if she could. If her lover was fickle, Nadine told herself that she did not care to live and face the dull, cold world, for what is life and the world to a young girl if the lover on whom she has set her heart and her hopes proves false to her?
Chapter II
From the moment that Nadine Holt heard the story of the perfidy of her lover she was a changed being.
She went wearily enough to the lodging-house she called home, and paced the floor up and down the live-long night.
"He was pleased enough with me before Dorothy Glenn's pink-and-white baby face came between us," she moaned, clinching her hands tightly together and bursting ever and anon into a flood of tears.
She looked around at the little, stuffy room, and thought of all her girlish day-dreams – of the sweet hopes she had had of soon leaving those dingy four walls, and of having a little bower of a cottage to call "home," with a handsome young husband all her own to love her.
She had pictured every scene to herself – just how each cozy room should be furnished, and what vines and flowers should grow in the garden, and the pretty dresses she would wear, and how she would stand at the window and watch for handsome Harry to come home each night, and what a dear, cozy life they would lead, loving each other so dearly.
And now what of those vanished day-dreams? Ah! God in heaven pity her! they lay in ruins around her, and heart-wrecked, heart-broken, she was facing the cold, bleak world again.
It had been by the greatest effort that she had looked in Dorothy's face during the day that followed without betraying her bitter hatred of her; but as the hours crept on, and she saw Dorothy's glance wander uneasily now and then toward the clock, her intense rage grew almost uncontrollable.
"She is longing for the hours to pass, so that she may join him," thought Nadine, and her black eyes fairly scintillated at the thought.
Suddenly Dorothy raised her curly head from her work.
"Girls!" she exclaimed, shrilly and eagerly, "have you all forgotten that Monday is Labor Day? What are you going to do with yourselves?"
A score or more of voices answered at random that they thought it had been decided long since that they were all going up the Hudson on an excursion.
"I can't go on the excursion with you, girls," returned Dorothy, "for I've got another engagement."
"Bring your company with you," chorused a dozen or more of the girls.
Dorothy glanced up hastily and met Nadine's burning eyes fixed intently upon her.
She started, turned deathly pale, and then turned defiantly away, wondering if Nadine could by any means suspect that the engagement she had was to accompany handsome Harry Langdon to the matinée.
She wondered vaguely if Jessie, to whom she had confided this, had betrayed her.
The look in Nadine Holt's eyes as they met her own startled her.
The bell which released the girls from the work-room that night had scarcely rung ere Dorothy had on her sacque and sailor hat and was fairly flying down the steps and out into the street.
"I hope to goodness that I shall escape Jack to-night!" she muttered. "He can not get out as soon as I do, and I will be almost home while he is waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs;" and a little, light, airy laugh bubbled from her red lips.
Jack, as she called him, was one of the gilders in the book-bindery – a tall, handsome, manly young fellow of four-and-twenty, whose only failing was that he loved little Dorothy Glenn to distraction.
"Yes, I shall escape Jack, sure, to-night!" laughed Dorothy again.
But the laugh died from her lips, for at that instant there was the sound of hurried footsteps behind her – footsteps she knew but too well – and the next instant Jack Garner stood beside her.
"Dorothy!" he panted, "Why didn't you wait for me, little girl?"
Dorothy started guiltily.
"Why, gracious! is it you, Jack?" she cried. "I certainly thought you had gone home long ago, and so I hurried away."
His handsome face brightened; the dark shadow was quickly dispelled from his earnest, brown eyes.
"Do you know, Dorothy," he said, "I was half afraid that you had run away from me intentionally; and yet I could hardly bring myself to believe it, the thought gave me such a sharp pang of pain at the heart." The girl laughed a little nervously.
"I wanted to talk to you about Labor Day," he said earnestly; "but I fear what I have to say will grieve you, dear." ("Oh, gracious goodness, that's just what I expected!" was the thought that flashed through her guilty little brain.) "Dorothy," he said, huskily, "I'm afraid that I will not be able to get off Labor Day, although it is a legal holiday and I had set my heart upon taking you somewhere. We have found that there is some work which must be got out, or it will mean a heavy loss to our employers. I was the only one whom they felt they could call upon to help them in their dilemma, and I could not refuse them, even though a vision of your pretty, disappointed face rose up before my mind's eye. I knew you would be expecting me to take you somewhere on Labor Day. Oh! Dorothy, how can I make amends for it?"
To his great surprise, she laughed gayly.
"Don't trouble yourself about me, Jack," she exclaimed. "I won't mind it one bit;" and her pink-and-white face fairly dimpled over with smiles.
He opened his brown eyes wide and looked at her in surprise, remembering quite well that for many a week past Dorothy had been looking forward to this holiday and calculating how she should spend it.
"But you will