omen all his life, and the only
mistakes he ever made were those characteristic errors of omission
attaching to a persistent ignorance of the innate good in human nature.
It is this same innate good that upsets the calculations of most
villains.

Absorbed as she was in her great grief, Catrina was in no mood to seek
for motives--to split a moral straw. She only knew that this man seemed
to understand her as no one had ever understood her. She was content
with the knowledge that he took the trouble to express and to show a
sympathy of which those around her had not suspected her to be in need.

The moment had been propitious, and Claude de Chauxville, with true
Gallic insight, had seized it. Her heart was sore and lonely--almost
breaking--and she was without the worldly wisdom which tells us that
such hearts must, at all costs, be hidden from the world. She was
without religious teaching--quite without that higher moral teaching
which is independent of creed and conformity, which is only learnt at a
good mother's knee. Catrina had not had a good mother. She had had the
countess--a weak-minded, self-indulgent, French-novel-reading woman.
Heaven protect our children from such mothers!

In the solitude of her life Catrina Lanovitch had conceived a great
love--a passion such as a few only are capable of attaining, be it for
weal or woe. She had seen this love ignored--walked under foot by its
object with a grave deliberation which took her breath away when she
thought of it. It was all in all to her; to him it was nothing. Her
philosophy was simple. She could not sit still and endure. At this time
it seemed unbearable. She must turn and rend some one. She did not know
whom. But some one must suffer. It was in this that Claude de Chauxville
proposed to assist her.

"It is preposterous that people should make others suffer and go
unpunished," he said, intent on his noble purpose.

Catrina's eyelids flickered, but she made no answer. The soreness of her
heart had not taken the form of a definite revenge as yet. Her love for
Paul was still love, but it was perilously near to hatred. She had not
reached the point of wishing definitely that he should suffer, but the
sight of Etta--beautiful, self-confident, carelessly possessive in
respect to Paul--had brought her within measurable distance of it.

"The arrogance of those who have all that they desire is insupportable,"
the Frenchman went on in his favorite, non-committing,