Hermione Cavanagh, without the scar, would have been one of the handsomest of women. She was of the grand type, with height and a nobility of presence to which the extreme loveliness of her perfect features lent a harmonizing grace. Of a dazzling complexion, the hair which lay above her straight fine brows shone ebon-like in its lustre, while her eyes, strangely and softly blue, filled the gazer at first with surprise and then with delight as the varying emotions of her quick mind deepened them into a more perfect consonance with her hair, or softened them into something like the dewy freshness of heaven-born flowers. Her mouth was mobile, but the passions it expressed were not of the gentlest, whatever might be the language of her eyes, and so it was that her face was in a way a contradiction of itself, which made it a fascinating study to one who cared to watch it, or possessed sufficient understanding to read its subtle language. She was oddly dressed in a black, straight garment, eminently in keeping with the room; but there was taste displayed in the arrangement of her hair, and nothing could make her face anything but a revelation of beauty, unless it was the scar, and that Frank Etheridge did not see. "Are you--" she began and paused, looking at him with such surprise that he felt his cheeks flush--"the lawyer who was in town a few days ago on some pressing inquiry?" "I am," returned Frank, making her the low bow her embarrassment seemed to demand. "Then you must excuse me," said she; "I thought you were an elderly man, like our own Mr. Hamilton. I should not have sent for you if----" "If you had known I had no more experience," he suggested, with a smile, seeing her pause in some embarrassment. She bowed; yet he knew that was not the way she would have ended the sentence if she had spoken her thought. "Then I am to understand," said he, with a gentleness born of his great wish to be of service to her, "that you would prefer that I should send you an older adviser. I can do it, Miss Cavanagh." "Thank you," she said, and stood hesitating, the slight flush on her cheek showing that she was engaged in some secret struggle. "I will tell you my difficulty," she pursued at last, raising her eyes with a frank look to his face. "Will you be seated?" Charmed with the graciousness of her manner when once relieved from embarrassment, he waited for her to sit and then took a chair himself. "It is a wearisome affair," she declared, "but one which a New York lawyer can solve without much trouble." And with the clearness of a highly cultivated mind, she gave him the facts of a case in which she and her sister had become involved through the negligence of her man of business. "Can you help me?" she asked. "Very easily," he replied. "You have but to go to New York and swear to these facts before a magistrate, and the matter will be settled without difficulty." "But I cannot go to New York." "No? Not on a matter of this importance?"