"The man is a fiend!" groaned Miss Erroll, rising from her seat, and pacing up and down the luxurious apartment, her crimson dressing-gown trailing far behind her on the soundless velvet carpet. She loved luxury, this woman, and she had sinned to attain it, but everything seemed to go wrong in her life. Punishment for her sins seemed to follow on her footsteps. So she had put the past behind her, and tried to reform her life. But ghosts from the dead past would rise up and haunt her, troubling her repose. "The man is a fiend!" she groaned again. "Why cannot he leave that beautiful, innocent girl in peace? I have done wrong in my life, I know, but nothing so bad as what he asks of me, to lend myself to a vile plot against the peace of a girl who has never harmed me, a girl who has won my liking by her high-bred courtesy, as freely given to me as if I were her equal, instead of a paid dependent. How kind and good they all are to me, and how can I repay their bounty by such treachery?" All the good in her nature rose to the surface, and did battle against the wrong she was asked to do. And yet she dared not refuse; dared not risk what her tempter threatened. Cruel had been her battle with poverty before she obtained this situation. And if she lost it the dire struggle would begin again. She might not be able to get honest work; she might be tossed into the terrible maelstrom of women who had to sin for bread. Yet how could she, who was trying to redeem her own life from a hideous stain, how could she vilely plan to wreck another's life? It was a terrible struggle that was going on in her breast as she kept her lonely vigil there. She had not answered the letter yet, although he had commanded her to send a reply to-day. She waited in terror, silent, yet hoping that something would interpose to save her--praying that ere the morrow dawned her persecutor would fall down dead. "It is no harm, no sin, to wish him dead, that fiend who only lives to plan ruin for the innocent," she cried, in anguish, crumpling the fatal letter in her writhing hands. Then she gave a violent start, and looked toward the door, her hair seeming to rise on her head with terror. Did she really hear a low rat-tat upon her door there in the dead waste and middle of the night? She stood motionless, with her handsome head turned toward the door in an attitude of startled expectancy. The low knocking came again, and then a low, sweet voice called, softly: "Are you asleep? It's only me! Please let me in, dear?" The voice sounded like that of Claire, her sweet little girl pupil. With a sigh of relief she moved to the door and cautiously opened it. The next moment she started back with a shuddering cry of fear that was echoed by the figure on the threshold. The intruder was Cissy Carroll, with her long, dark hair flying loose over her white dressing gown. With startled outcries, they gazed at each other, and then Miss Carroll demanded, shrilly: