Marion looked at her coldly and held her head a trifle higher. “I’m in the habit of choosing whom I shall meet,” she said, quietly, “and I do not care to extend my circle of acquaintances to this class of society.” “Beware!” cried the now angry woman with a vicious hiss. “I said they were my friends. You had better not insult them!” As the two women stood glaring at each other the men watched them curiously. Such an extraordinary spectacle had sobered them a little. Marion, young, slight, girlish in her trailing white robe; the other voluptuous, sensual, even coarse, in her negligé of flaming scarlet. It was a spectacle of virtue confronted by vice—of innocence menaced by wanton evil. When Marion spoke again her voice vibrated strangely and she was fingering the little revolver nervously. “I hope and believe your friends are more honorable than you are, mademoiselle!” she said, distinctly, “for I doubt if either of them would dare insult a respectable girl, while you have deliberately laid a trap for me—for Heaven alone knows what diabolical motive.” For just a moment Carlotta looked ashamed, but she promptly recovered, and her frame fairly quivered with anger. “Put that weapon down and dress yourself,” she said, with a sneer crossing her face. “Your dress is in the bed-room. I shall be glad to have you leave me.” Marion turned toward the bed-room door, still grasping the pistol. When she reached the doorway she turned and faced them, throwing her head back with a motion of superb defiance. “If either of you dare to cross this threshold, look out!” she said briefly, but with unmistakable decision. As she was hurrying into her street dress she heard the three whispering together. The next second there was a scream from the woman and a perfect volley of curses. Clayton Graham had suddenly opened the door of the apartment and stood glaring at the trio. With a cry for help Marion bounded out and ran to him. “Oh, Mr. Graham! Save me!” she cried, half hysterically. “See, I have had to defend myself from those fiends with this pistol. Oh, what am I to think of this wicked woman?” Clayton Graham looked bewildered for a moment, then a light dawned on his mind—he understood Carlotta’s motive. He had goaded this woman to fury when he spoke to her of Marion’s virtue; now she was doing her best to ruin the young girl’s fair name, and she would have succeeded admirably with one less noble and courageous than Marion. “So this is your revenge,” he muttered, facing the woman. “You are trying to blacken her good name, you infamous creature!” The woman answered nothing, she had been caught red-handed. No one knew her better than Clayton Graham—there was no use trying to deceive him in the matter. “She was weeping in the dressing-room and I spoke to her,” went on Marion, quickly. “She said she was grieving over the loss of a friend and asked me to come home with her, so she would not be so lonely.”