“Miles, don’t,” she gasped; “you kill me. But I can do you one service, and I will. I--I love you now. I will take you to Ismay.” “You can’t. She’s in bed.” “She’s up in her sitting-room;” and he could not see the spite in her face. Marveling at her strange changes, Cylmer followed her, his heart beating uncomfortably. But to see Ismay, to have in one word all his doubts destroyed--for that he would have followed anywhere unquestioning. “Mrs. Trelane?” he said doubtingly, as they mounted the stairs. “Is in the library. Besides, what matters?”--dully. “You have the right. You mean to marry her.” She opened Ismay’s door softly--too softly--and parted the curtains. “Look,” she whispered in his ear, “there is the girl you love. Now, who is right, you or I?” Cylmer gave one glance; then, sick, staggered, broken, he turned away. In a great chair Ismay sat; at her feet was Marcus Wray, holding her hand, talking eagerly, very low. On the girl’s face was no sign of that loathing she had professed, only a beseeching, doubtful look of dread and hope. “Come away,” whispered Cristiane, and he obeyed her, dazed and stumbling. Ismay, whom he would have sworn was true, whom he had loved as he had never thought to love, Ismay was her mother’s child! His face was hard as iron and as relentless as he stopped in the hall. Cristiane shrank away from him like a child who fears a blow. “Don’t look like that. I didn’t know,” she lied breathlessly. “But, you see, I told the truth.” “Curse the truth, and you,” he said between his teeth. “Get out of my way.” She could not hear what he said, but she turned away again, crying pitifully. “I couldn’t let you love her and not know. Don’t be so hard to me.” With an effort that wrenched his very soul, the man mastered himself. “All right, child. I know you meant to be straight. But run away to bed. I can’t talk.” Humiliated to the last drop of his blood, he stood in the hall alone, opposite the half-opened door of the library. Cristiane had spoken the truth again; Mrs. Trelane was there. And the very spirit of evil and recklessness had prompted her to put on that very white gown in which she had been photographed for Lord Abbotsford. Ismay was not there to stop her; she had explained to Cristiane that her black evening gown was torn; and now she stood, ignorant of any stranger’s eyes, before the glass over the fireplace in the very attitude of the photograph. Her round, languorous throat; her arms, lovely still; the very turn of her head, Miles Cylmer--saw--and remembered. The mysterious woman of the photograph stood before him. No wonder Ismay had been interested in Abbotsford’s death; no wonder she had paled when he brought out that broken trinket. She had it still, and probably she and her mother had laughed together at the cleverness with which she had wiled it from him. He had been fooled--fooled by a pair of green eyes, a mouth all love, a smile all witching.