For beautiful women see the worst side of human nature--they usually deal with the worst of men.

Catrina was an easy tool in the hands of such as Claude de Chauxville; for he had dealt with women and that which is evil in women all his life, and the only mistakes he ever made were those characteristic errors of omission attaching to a persistent ignorance of the innate good in human nature.
It is this same innate good that upsets the calculations of most villains.
Absorbed as she was in her great grief, Catrina was in no mood to seek for motives--to split a moral straw.

She only knew that this man seemed to understand her as no one had ever understood her.

She was content with the knowledge that he took the trouble to express and to show a sympathy of which those around her had not suspected her to be in need.
The moment had been propitious, and Claude de Chauxville, with true Gallic insight, had seized it.

Her heart was sore and lonely--almost breaking--and she was without the worldly wisdom which tells us that such hearts must, at all costs, be hidden from the world.