CHAPTER XXIV.
"QUEEN AND HUNTRESS." Hope Wayne leaned out of the window from which she had just scattered the fragments of the drawing Arthur Merlin had given her.

The night was soft and calm, and trees, not far away, entirely veiled her from observation.
She thought how different this window was from that other one at home, also shaded by the trees; and what a different girl it was who looked from it.

She recalled that romantic, musing, solitary girl of Pinewood, who lived alone with a silent, grave old nurse, and the quiet years that passed there like the shadows and sunlight over the lawn.

She remembered the dark, handsome face that seemed to belong to the passionate poems that girl had read, and the wild dreams she had dreamed in the still, old garden.

In the hush of the summer twilight she heard again the rich voice that seemed to that other girl of Pinewood sweeter than the music of the verses, and felt the penetrating glance, that had thrilled the heart of that girl until her red cheek was pale.
How well for that girl that the lips which made the music had never whispered love! Because--because-- Hope raised herself from lightly leaning on the window-sill as the thought flashed in her mind, and she stood erect, as if straightened by a sudden, sharp, almost insupportable pain--"because," she went on saying in her mind, "had they done so, that other romantic, solitary girl at Pinewood"-- dear child! Hope's heart trembled for her--"might have confessed that she loved!" Hope Wayne clenched her hands, and, all alone in her dim room, flushed, and then turned pale, and a kind of cold splendor settled on her face, so that if Arthur Merlin could have seen her he would have called her Diana.
During the moment in which she thought these things--for it was scarcely more--the little white bits of paper floated and fell beneath her.