There was no great vice in Mabel Saker. She was mischief personified, a vain, merry creature, with a mind like a spice-box and eyes like amber. If a man admired her, she had neither the heart nor the character to treat him with surliness. Being so inured to sentimental pleasantries, she was not easily frightened by anything she might see in a man’s eyes. Flirtation was merely a recreation with her, an amusement no more serious than fly-fishing or the aesthetic appreciation of a musical comedy. She was a woman of no ideals, few convictions. She lived her sensuous, merry existence in the sun, and never delved around her for the problems that yawn like primeval forests about the fair meads of life. Maltravers jested with her, and she took his jests as she would have taken a flask of scent or many such trifles, in delicate acknowledgment of her own charms. She did not consider Ophelia’s powerful pride or her aggressive egoism that could suffer no shadow. Hence she was unable at first to comprehend Ophelia’s change of temper, her petulance, the true reason of their frequent bickerings. Miss Saker had much of the vixen in her, in the spiteful sense. She was too shallow and boisterous to appreciate the negative passions in a friend; she had too little sympathy to treat seriously and honorably the injured pride of a fellow-woman. Hence she tossed her head and bridled at what she was pleased to call Ophelia’s “whims.” And, being a creature of contradictory impulses, she took pleasure in aggravating her friend’s impatience and in playing the tormentor with true feminine agility. Gay swimmer that she was, Miss Saker soon discovered herself beyond the shallows of her frivolous philosophy. The climax came with an abruptness that startled even her futile soul. And since Mabel Saker was a woman who heartily detested any troubling of her sensuous good-humor, she was soon every whit as bitter as Ophelia and as reasonless as a frightened ape. The storm broke one evening after a dinner-party at the castle. Maltravers had lavished his fascinations in Miss Saker’s service and had left Ophelia to a casual friend. By the fatefulness of coincidence, Ophelia had come upon the pair seated under the palms in a corner of the conservatory. Moreover, she had seen Maltravers take the flower the brunette had pinned over her heart. About midnight, the very night after Joan had taken lodging in Widow Milton’s cottage, Mabel Saker was in her bedroom unravelling her dark hair. To her came Ophelia fully dressed, her face pale as china, her lips almost bloodless, her eyes peculiarly bright. There was a restrained fury in her look, an atmosphere about her that boded ill for the friendship between the two.