When Elsie entered her boudoir, flushed with laughter and breathless with running, she threw herself on the azure couch, and gathering her ringlets in a mass between her hand and the warm cheek under which it was thrust, fell into a deeper train of thought than was usual to her.

"It's done, and I don't care. He loves me, and I must be loved. He's rich, generous, devoted, worships me and always will, that's one comfort. There'll be no one to halve his devotion or his money with me, no one to look glum if I want to be a little bit extravagant. Grant never refused me anything in his life, but I'm always afraid to ask half that I want. But with Tom everything will be my own. He won't ask a question. Such laces as I will have! As for cashmere shawls and silks, he shall get them for me by the dozens. Elizabeth won't say that such things are out of place then. I shall be a married woman, free of her and this old house too, free of everything, but—but——"

Elsie started up, breaking this selfish train of thought with the action.

"I wish she'd stop talking to me; I don't want to hear about it. Why won't she bear her trouble alone, if she will make trouble about what isn't to be helped? I'll have no more confidences with her, that's certain. It is like breaking one's heart up in little pieces. I don't want to keep secrets, but forget them; and I will, too, in spite of her. She shan't make me eternally miserable with her pining and remorse."

Elsie paused before a mirror as these thoughts rose in her mind and half broke from her lips. She was threading out her curls and trying the effect 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 something of his courage, frivolous as people think me. Persecute her or provoke me too far and I will tell him all."

"Indeed you would not," answered North, quietly.

"What should prevent me?"

"She will. You dare not break a solemn promise to her."

"I dare!" she almost shrieked, clenching her little hand in a paroxysm of rage. "I will, if ever you come here again."

"No; I think not. Women are weak creatures, but they generally find strength to keep secrets that bring ruin in the telling. You cannot be over anxious to see this proud brother of yours commit murder on——"

"On a villain—a household traitor—a—a——"

Elsie stopped for want of breath.

"Be quiet," said North, rising sternly and towering over her. "I have no dealings with you. One might as well reason with a handful of silkweed thrown upon the wind."

"But I will have something to say—everything to say. You have pursued her, plundered her, tortured her long enough. More than once she has been on the brink of discovery by your persistence in prowling over the grounds and from her attempts to conceal your rapacious extortions. All this must end."

"With all my heart; let the lady accede to my terms and I disappear."

"What are those terms?"

"I will write them, and your own fair hands shall give her the note."

Elsie did not answer, but her white lips closed firmly, and her blue eyes glittered like steel in the glow of a hot fire, as he dipped his pen deliberately in the bronze inkstand and began to write.

"There," he said, folding the note and presenting it to her with a princely air, as if her courage had impressed him with respect; "place this in her hands and she will know how to carry it out."

Elsie took the note and hid it away in the folds of her dress.

"Do not fail," he said, before taking his hat from the table.

"I will not," answered Elsie. "But these cruel visits must cease now and for ever. I will give the note only on this condition."

"Her answer will decide that. Now, good-bye."

He reached forth his hand, smiling pleasantly upon her; but she clenched hers, as if tempted to strike him for the insolent offer, and turned away biting her pale lips.

The hand, rejected with such disdain, fell towards the hat which North placed lightly on his head, casting one glance in the opposite mirror as he did so. Then, with the elastic step of a man retiring from a festival, he left the chamber, while Elsie looked after him with wondering eyes and parted lips, astonished by an audacity which was absolutely sublime.

The young creature stood with bated breath till his light footsteps died away in the nearest passage. She listened anxiously, but heard no door close or further movement of any kind. His exit was noiseless as his entrance had been.

When Elsie was left alone she sat down in the dim light of Elizabeth's room, pushed the hair back from her forehead and pressed both palms on her temples, where pain was throbbing like a pulse. She moaned and cried out under the sudden anguish, for resistance to suffering of any kind was killing to this young creature, and the reaction which followed that passionate outburst of feeling left her helpless as a child.