He had either found he could do no good by his mesmeric influences, or else he had lost them, and so he was working up some other scheme against me.

I pondered long over the words, "If he leaves disgraced, proved to be a villain, a deceiver, a blackleg, or worse than that, while I show up as an angel of light ?" Surely that meant a great deal! I must be on the watch.

I must be as cunning as he.

I did not like eavesdropping or playing the spy, and yet I felt there were times when it would be right to do so, and surely that time had come in my history.

There was villainy to be unmasked, there was a true, innocent girl to be saved, while my reputation, happiness, and perhaps life were in danger.