As I started to undress, I remembered suddenly the envelope Curtiss had sent me. I got it out and opened it, and my heart leaped with a sudden suffocating sympathy as I looked at the photograph within. A Madonna, indeed! Mr. Royce had chosen the right word, had paid a fitting tribute not only to her beauty but to the spotless soul behind it. For the face was essentially girlish, virginal--there was no shameful secret back of that clear, direct gaze. It was sweet, frank, winning--a strong face, too, showing intellect and training; no ordinary woman, I told myself; not one, certainly, to be swayed by momentary passion, to yield to an unreasoning impulse. No, nor one to fall victim to an adventurer; for this was a woman with ideals and high ones--a woman whose clear eyes could detect any specious imposture at a glance. A fitting mate for Burr Curtiss--the appointed mate--and yet not his! Not his! Snatched from him by a desperate act. Desperate! If I, a man hardened by contact with the world, could feel that, how much more poignantly must she have felt it--with what horror must she have shrunk from it--with what agony yielded! As I gazed at her, it seemed to me that there was something familiar in the face--in the set of the eyes, the shape of the forehead--something familiar in the expression, in the poise of the head, which puzzled and eluded me. A resemblance to her mother, I decided at last, and so put the photograph away and went to bed. But sleep did not come easily. Ever before my eyes there danced a vision of that vine-embowered cottage opening from the Lawrence grounds. There, I felt, lay the key to the mystery; it was to it I must turn for the clue which would lead me out of this labyrinth. There was some secret about these Kingdon sisters which defied and worried me. Dr. Schuyler's explanation of their connection with Mrs. Lawrence did not in the least satisfy me. That she should keep them near her, shower them with gifts, merely because of an old fondness for a cousin of theirs, seemed to me exceedingly improbable. There must be some other reason, some more compelling one than that. It was much more likely, I told myself, remembering the passionate fierceness of the younger sister, that the gifts were intended to placate, not to reward; that they were the outgrowth of fear, not of affection. Fear of what? I could not even guess. Fear of the exposure of some secret, perhaps--and the thought stung me to a sudden attention. Had the gifts been in vain? Had the secret been exposed? Was it they who had whispered in Marcia Lawrence's ear the story which had broken the marriage, caused her flight, ruined her future? Was that their revenge for some old injury? Had they waited till the last moment to make it more complete, more crushing? But if they, indeed, had so avenged themselves, would she have fled to them for refuge? Would she not rather have fled from them with loathing?