“Bah! What to me is the life of the man who struck my father dead at my feet! I’ll amuse myself by playing the game of love with him for a week, and then for the master-stroke. I’ll watch him as a cat a mouse, and when I’m ready, strike to kill. If he had no mercy, I shall have none.” John found her in a mood of elusive girlishness. When he begged her to remember her parting words, the half-pledged promise of a message for which he waited, she only laughed and fenced. She allowed him to call each afternoon and evening for a week until he was drunk with the joy of her presence--until the sense of personal intimacy and the growing consciousness of comradeship had made his will obedient to her slightest whim. It amused her to watch the growth of his powers of intuition, born of this daily life, which enabled him to anticipate her wishes. For the man, these days were as water to the lips of a thirsty dreamer. In the heart of the girl, who studied his every movement with deep sinister purpose, there had grown a cruel joy in the consciousness of the tyranny she wielded over a powerful human life. Toward the end of the week he began to beg her tenderly for a single word of love. At last she promised him an answer on the evening following, and forbade his afternoon call. She knew the effect of his longer absence would be to give her greater power. At last she was sure that the hour had struck toward which she had moved with such infinite pains, the hour of his complete surrender and his utter trust, when she had but to breathe her wish to know the guarded secrets of the Klan and they would be whispered into her ear without a moment’s hesitation. She had planned to lead him to the seat amid the shadows of the trees near the house from which Isaac said he had watched the dance the night of the tragedy, and if possible gain both important secrets at once. She again selected the low cut white chiffon she wore the night he had declared his love. Maggie’s keen eyes watched her dress with a care never shown before. The little black maid flashed her white teeth more than once behind her back as she observed the delicate yet sure art with which, by a touch here and there, her mistress managed to suggest with unusual daring the physical charms of her extraordinary beauty. When the task was finished and she surveyed her form in her mirror with a look of proud content, Maggie laughed: “You sho’ is trying ter kill ’im to-night!” “Maggie, how dare you suggest such a thing!” “De Laws a mussy, Miss Stella, I des mean dat you’se de purtiest thing in de whole worl’ an’ he gwine drap dead quick as he sees ye!” “That will do, Maggie,” she said severely. “Yassum.” But in spite of her severity, the mistress smiled at the maid, and Maggie burst into a fit of laughter. When at length it subsided, she stood with wide staring worshipful eyes gazing at Stella entranced.