"But my temptation is strong; shall I yield to it, mademoiselle ?" Catrina smiled unwillingly.
"I would rather leave it to your own conscience," she said.

"But I fail to see the danger you anticipate." "Then I accept, madame," said De Chauxville, with the engaging frankness which ever had a false ring in it.
If the whole affair had been prearranged in Claude de Chauxville's mind, it certainly succeeded more fully than is usually the case with human schemes.

If, on the other hand, this invitation was the result of chance, Fortune had favored Claude de Chauxville beyond his deserts.
The little scene had played itself out before the eyes of Paul, who did not want it; of Etta, who desired it; and of Catrina, who did not exactly know what she wanted, with the precision of a stage-play carefully rehearsed.
Claude de Chauxville had unscrupulously made use of feminine vanity with all the skill that was his.

A little glance toward Etta, as he accepted the invitation, conveyed to her the fact that she was the object of his clever little plot; that it was in order to be near her that he had forced the Countess Lanovitch to invite him to Thors; and Etta, with all her shrewdness, was promptly hoodwinked.

Vanity is a handicap assigned to clever women by Fate, who handicaps us all without appeal.