White now with anger, furious at Margaret's discovery of his falseness, and yet more furious at the necessity which her ultimatum laid upon him to amend his ways or lose his wife; unholy passion for her rival hot within him, and the vengeful blood of his race coursing tumultuously through his veins, Victor De Jarnette strode down Massachusetts Avenue almost a madman. Not for him was the soft beauty of the night--the breath of flowers, the light of stars, the play of summer breezes among the leaves. His heart was closed to the sweet influences of the Pleiades. That heart, alas! out of which are the issues of life had become a seething cauldron of fierce passions. He did not go immediately to his office. In fact, it was hours before he did. When at last he reached the place he began tearing up letters and clearing up his desk with one eye on the clock as if in preparation for departure or a new incumbent. His blood was still at fever heat, and his thoughts did not tend to cool it. Besides, the law of heredity was against him. What he was doing, his mother before him had done. She, too, had felt this hot surging in the veins and had given it free course. A fearful heritage is ungoverned blood. As he opened a drawer to put away some papers his eye fell on a folded document. He looked at it absently at first, hardly aware that he saw it. Then, as the innocent looking thing forced itself upon his consciousness, he took it up and read it. How well he remembered the day it was written. A sneer curved his lips at the thought of his ecstatic state of mind at that time. Fool! Then as he looked at the paper, there suddenly leaped into his mind a cruel thought, and into his face the quick reflection of its malevolence. He stared at the thing he held. "I'll do it!" he cried, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table with an oath. "I'll show her!" * * * * * "Don't do it, Victor!" pleaded John Jarvis, the lawyer, a half hour later, when his angry client had made his wishes known. "Don't do it! My God, man, it would be too cruel! too brutally cruel!" "Brutal or not," swore Victor De Jarnette, "according to the laws of this District I can do it, and, by God! I will!" "Wait till to-morrow," urged the lawyer. "You will think better of it in the morning." "There may never be a to-morrow," Victor answered, recklessly. "I'll make sure of it now. If you won't do it I can get somebody that will." Before he left the attorney's office it was done, and done, alas! in due and proper form. CHAPTER VI A FRIEND IN NEED