Over Julia Webber's face there crept an ominous, ashen pallor. Her eyes blazed with the fury of a woman scorned, while her slender, jeweled fingers clutched the folds of her lurid garments with the grasp of a dying agony. Another moment and her emotions were controlled. The vindictive gleam in her eyes was unnoticed by the man, for at that moment his whole thought and attention was given to the white robed figure.
Stella, for it was she, opened her eyes and looked around the unfamiliar room in utter bewilderment. Then her gaze rested upon the young man's face, but without a shadow of recognition in the face.
With a smile of astonishing sweetness he bent gently over her and whispered softly, "Do not be frightened, Stella. You are safe with me. Rest a little and I will explain all."
Then, as her eyes closed once more in response to the powerful drug which he had administered, he turned roughly upon the woman at his side and bade her watch and wait upon this girl, then adding with a significant expression, "I make you responsible for her; I shall be back this evening;" he abruptly left the house.
When the door closed upon her companion, Julia Webber stood beside the couch, immovable as marble.
Her flowing garments slipped from her sloping shoulders until one half her bosom was exposed. The lines of her face were rigid, but the swelling bosom rose and fell in gasps that were almost convulsive.
Hatred, envy and revenge gleamed in her scintillating eye balls while she gazed upon the pure and beautiful features of Stella.
At last, through her tightly closed teeth she muttered, hoarsely, "So this is why he scorns me! For this girl of twenty. It is not her pretty face or perfect form in which lies her attraction for Monsieur, for I am equally beautiful, but it is her very virtue, her purity, that draws his passions like a powerful magnet and holds him her slave until the smirch of his own contamination is branded on her brow. Pah! These inconstant fiends; They mold us to their own ideals, then scorn the creature of their own admiring handiwork. But enough of this! My revenge must be as sweet as my disappointment is bitter. I am mistress here, and perhaps my gallant Monsieur, some other more agreeable connoisseur may sip the dew from your budding rose before you again enhale its fragrance.
"Ah, Captain, you here," she exclaimed as a stranger unceremoniously entered the apartment.
"How could I remain from your presence, my beautiful Julia?" responded the newcomer gallantly, then catching sight of the couch and its occupant he added, hastily, "My God! how beautiful! who is she and where did you get her?"