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Title: The Substitute Prisoner

Author: Max Marcin

Release Date: August 2, 2006 [eBook #18965]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE SUBSTITUTE PRISONER

by

MAX MARCIN

Author of "Are You My Wife?" "Britz of Headquarters," etc.

Copyright, 1911, by
Moffat, Yard and Company
New York
Published October, 1911

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Mrs. Collins (_Frontispiece_)

He looked about him in a bewildered way

She felt herself seized with a desire to weep

She did not repel the arm

THE SUBSTITUTE PRISONER

CHAPTER I

Did she come to threaten or to plead?

The question, darting swiftly through his mind as his eyes took in the
unfamiliar outline of her figure, produced a storm of agitation which
left him gazing stupidly at her, with fixed eyes in which surprise and
terror mingled.

He had never seen her before--his first moment of survey impressed that
clearly on him. Yet her presence in his home at this compromising hour
signified that she was involved, remotely or intimately, in his own
tangled affairs. The thought impelled him to closer scrutiny of her.

She was pleasing to the eye. But whether her beauty was soft and
alluring or hard and repelling, his bewildered senses could not
determine. Her toilet, fresh and elegant, rich and clinging, harmonizing
with the velvet drapings and melting lights of the room, seemed to
invest her with an air of breeding, gave her an outward show of
refinement. Yet she betrayed certain signs of doubtful comfort, as if
all this magnificence had bee