CHAPTER I.
Did she come to threaten or to plead?
The question, darting swiftly through his mind as his eyes took in the unfamiliar outline of her figure, produced a storm of agitation which left him gazing stupidly at her, with fixed eyes in which surprise and terror mingled.
He had never seen her before--his first moment of survey impressed that clearly on him.

Yet her presence in his home at this compromising hour signified that she was involved, remotely or intimately, in his own tangled affairs.

The thought impelled him to closer scrutiny of her.
She was pleasing to the eye.

But whether her beauty was soft and alluring or hard and repelling, his bewildered senses could not determine.

Her toilet, fresh and elegant, rich and clinging, harmonizing with the velvet drapings and melting lights of the room, seemed to invest her with an air of breeding, gave her an outward show of refinement.