ffect as they floated, like golden thistledown, over the roses of her
cheek. All at once she started, and a look of pale horror stole to her
face; the hand which had been wandering among her hair dropped to her
side, turning cold and white as marble; the lips which had been just
parted with an admiring smile of her own beauty, lost every trace of
color. She still gazed intently into the glass, but not at herself.
Beyond her pretty image, reflected from the distance, sat a man with a
pen in his hand, as if just arrested in the act of writing. Rich shadows
of crimson drapery lay around him, and a gleam of pure light from a
half-closed upper blind fell across his head, lighting it up grandly.

It was a magnificent picture that Elsie gazed upon, far beyond her own
image in the glass. But she only saw the man, without regard to his
surroundings, and the very heart in her bosom turned sick with loathing
or with fear.

It was North, looking at her through the open door, with a sneering
smile on his lip--North in the very chamber of her brother's wife,
quietly seated there as if he had been master of the house. For a full
minute Elsie stood, forming a double picture in the glass with that
bold, bad man, then her color came hotly back, and she turned upon him,
brave with indignation.

"You here!" she said, advancing into the room till its crimson haze
overwhelmed her. "You here, and in this chamber! Get up at once and
begone. If my brother finds you under his roof he will shoot you on the
spot."

"Never fear, pretty one," said North, with an evil gleam on his face.
"Two can play at a game of that sort. If he made the first assault
nothing would give me more pleasure. Self-defence is justifiable in law,
and his will is made."

Elsie was trembling from head to foot, but she leaned one hand heavily
on the table that he might not see her agitation.

"Man, man, you would not--you dare not meet my brother. You that have
wronged him so!"

"Excuse me," said North, biting the feather of his pen and looking down
on a sheet of note-paper on which he had been about to write; "I do not
see this wrong so clearly. If a woman's heart will wander off in any
forbidden direction, am I to blame because it flutters into my bosom?
And if other hearts follow after----"

"Stop!" cried Elsie, stamping her little foot passionately on the
carpet. "How dare you speak of a fraud so black, of treason so
detestable! I am his sister, sir, and have so