In a retrospective flash there passed before him a vision of those days, when he, Mr.Philip Steele, son of a multimillionaire banker, was one of the favored few in the social life of a great city; when fashionable clubs opened their doors to him, and beautiful women smiled upon him, and when, among others, this girl of the hyacinth letter held out to him the tempting lure of her heart.

Her heart?
Or was it the tempting of his own wealth?
Steele laughed, and his strong white teeth gleamed in a half-contemptuous smile as he turned again toward the fire.
He sat down, with the letter still in his hands, and thought of some of those others whom he had known.

What had become of Jack Moody, he wondered--the good old Jack of his college days, who had loved this girl of the hyacinth with the whole of his big, honest heart, but who hadn't been given half a show because of his poverty?
And where was Whittemore, the young broker whose hopes had fallen with his own financial ruin; and Fordney, who would have cut off ten years of his life for her--and half-a-dozen others he might name?
Her heart! Steele laughed softly as he lifted the letter so that the sweet perfume of it came to him more strongly.

How she had tempted him for a time! Almost--that night of the Hawkins' ball--he had surrendered to her.

He half-closed his eyes, and as the logs crackled in the fireplace and the wind roared outside, he saw her again as he had seen her that night--gloriously beautiful; memory of the witchery of her voice, her hair, her eyes firing his blood like strong wine.