Red hair--rich, dusky auburn red, with soft natural waves in it from where it was drawn simply back from its parting on the low white brow to the loose coil at the back of the shapely head; the clear, colorless, dazzling skin that goes with such fiery locks; eyes of sparkling reddish hazel with full, white lids and long, curled lashes; a Grecian nose long enough to indicate decided characteristics; a rather large mouth, with thin red lips that could express cruelty when they chose, but whose smile could dazzle and betray--such she stood in her somber garb, with diamonds flashing on her bare white arms and throat, looking the siren that she was by right of beauty, passion and power, yet all inconsistency, capable of heights and depths, and predominated by something subtle and tigerish in her animal nature. “Will he come to-night?” she muttered, half bitterly, as she paced from one end to the other of the splendid room. “It is more than two weeks since I came to our winter home in Jacksonville. Why did he wish to linger, unless it was to be rid of me, to be from his chains, as no doubt he calls them in his secret heart? What has he been doing all this time? I will not believe it was business, as he writes. Had he loved me as he pretends, he would have come with me; he--” The door opened quickly, arresting the querulous complaint. She turned and saw her husband coming toward her with an eager face, and his name fell from her lips in a tone of mingled reproach and rapture: “Norman!” “Camille!” he answered, in a deep voice; and as he paused by her side his dark eyes swept the dazzling face searchingly, and somewhat plaintively, as if doubtful of a welcome. But she flung herself upon his breast, and her round, white arms clasped his neck with passionate _abandon_. His momentary doubt dispelled, he embraced her with an ardor equaling her own, and pressed kiss after kiss on her upturned face. “You are glad to see me again, Camille,” he murmured, happily. “Ah! this pays for the dreary days of absence from your side.” Mrs. de Vere half withdrew herself at those words from her husband’s arms, and looking up at him, cried out, reproachfully. “If you had loved me you would not have stayed so long!” “Did you miss me, darling?” She pouted mutinously as a school-girl for an instant, then, as if impelled to the truth in spite of herself, hung her graceful head and murmured, bashfully: “Yes--bitterly.” Norman de Vere’s dark eyes beamed with a sort of loving triumph as he answered: