He was a very peculiar man, this Oswald Ferris with his tall, proud form, and dark, corsair like beauty. He was a brilliant conversationalist, and shone in society, although after all, men liked him best. Women like Virgie Mason shrunk from him without a reason why, but Sibyl St. Alban had been hand-and-glove with him for a brief season. She had taught him “All the cruel madness of love, The honey of poison-flowers, And all the measureless ill.” The little coquette had scarcely understood the nature of the man she had fooled with such charming grace in the early days of her widowhood, when, having been debarred from the pastime for some months, she entered upon it with new zest and pleasure. Ferris had been a splendid subject, too, for he seemed so ignorant of womanly coquetry and was so jealous, passionate, and intense, that he was a constant amusement to Sibyl. She greatly enjoyed “playing this big fish” as Cameron and the others phrased it, enjoyed it, systematically, until Strangemore joined them, then as her slighted lover said, she threw him over. She was tired of him, and here was another subject, that was all Sibyl thought about it. She did not think about the adoring heart, the fiery temper, the passionate, undisciplined nature of the man she had wronged, nor of the fiery desire and longing for vengeance that rose from the ashes of his dead love. He had served her purpose, and she was done with him. She bent herself to the delightful task of winning Talbot Strangemore from his child-bride at home, and forgot all about Oswald Ferris, save when she was reminded of his existence by the reproachful glances he flashed at her, and by words he sometimes uttered whose barbed point had seemed to be aimed at her heart, and which stung her by their truth, but did not move her to repentance, because she was entirely cruel and heartless. So now this man whose heart and soul she had wrecked so heartlessly, was an exile for her sake, hating all women because this Circe born without a soul, had made a plaything of his heart and flung it back to him when weary, broken, ruined and worthless from the pastime of an hour. He was not a pleasant companion for Talbot Strangemore now. All his old brilliant gifts of talk and manner had deserted him. He had grown moody, dull, distrait and restless beyond measure. Once he had loved books, but he never opened one now. He spent hours and hours in long solitary walks. Strangemore rallied him a little drearily on his deep depression. “Do not give yourself up so wholly to your sorrow,” he said. “It is wrong to speak ill of the dead, but after all, Mrs. St. Alban was not worthy of the feeling we both wasted on her. That truth has come home to me although too late for my happiness.” They looked deep into each other’s eyes, those two men whose lives had been ruined to please the vanity of a beautiful, heartless butterfly.