Starr was very angry with Michael when he left her. There was perhaps more hurt pride and pique in her anger than she would have cared to own. He had failed to succumb to her charms, he had not seemed to notice her as other men did; he had even lost the look of admiration he used to wear when they were boy and girl. He had refused utterly to tell her what she had a great curiosity to know. She had been sure, was sure yet, that if Michael would tell her what he had against Stuyvesant Carter she could explain it satisfactorily. Her flattered little head was almost turned at this time with the adoration she had received. She thought she knew almost everything that Stuyvesant Carter had ever done. He was a fluent talker and had spent many hours detailing to her incidents and anecdotes of his eventful career. He had raced a good deal and still had several expensive racing cars. There wasn’t anything very dreadful about that except, of course, it was dangerous. He used to gamble a great deal but he had promised her he would never do it any more because she thought it unrefined. Of course it wasn’t as though he hadn’t plenty of money; and her mother had told her that all young men did those things. No, not her father of course, for he had been unusual, but times were different nowadays. Young men were expected to be a little wild. It was the influence of college life and a progressive age she supposed. It didn’t do any harm. They always settled down and made good husbands after they were married. Michael of course did not understand these things. He had spent a great many years in Florida with a dear old professor and a lot of good little boys. Michael was unacquainted with the ways of the world. Thus she reasoned, yet nevertheless Michael’s warning troubled her and finally she decided to go to the best source of information and ask the young man himself. Accordingly three days after Michael’s visit when he dropped in to ask if she would go to the opera that evening with him instead of something else they had planned to do together, she laughingly questioned him. “What in the world can you ever have done, Mr. Carter, that should make you unfit company for me?” She asked the question lightly yet her eyes watched his face most closely as she waited for the answer. The blood rolled in dark waves over his handsome face and his brows grew dark with anger which half hid the start of almost fear with which he regarded her. “What do you mean, Starr?” He looked at her keenly and could not tell if she were in earnest or not. “Just that,” she mocked half gravely. “Tell me what you have been doing that should make you unfit company for me? Some one has been trying to make me promise to have nothing to do with you, and I want to know what it means.” “Who has been doing that?” There were dangerous lights in the dark eyes, lights that showed the brutality of the coward and the evildoer.