"You shall return in safety," was the decided answer, while her listener's eyes blazed with the excitement of a new ambition. Here was her chance, and almost instantly her mode of action was decided. She had become sick and weary of her sinful life ever since that strange infatuation sprang up within her heart, and for one man's honest love, she would gladly have forsworn the admiration and homage of the world, but too late, she realized that man would never credit such as she, with honest love, and the scorn her tender sentiments evoked, filled her whole soul with bitterness and longing for revenge.

Now, through Stella's innocent and unsuspecting friendship, she felt the way was open for a more subtle and satisfying vengeance, and subduing her excitement with marvelous control, she continued seriously, "Miss Sinclair, the subject of my life and surroundings is not one that I should broach to you, but you have given me your confidence in a measure, and, believe me, you shall never regret it. Now it may be a bold thing for me to do, but I am going to ask you a question, and upon your answer will depend much more than you imagine. Have I your permission?"

"Certainly," was Stella's wondering reply.

"I wish to ask, Miss Sinclair, if I were to leave this place; abandon the life that I have led for ten years past and obey in future every regulation and restriction of respectable society, would you call me your friend and allow me to visit you at your home?"

For a moment only, Stella hesitated, then holding out her hand to this extraordinary woman, she responded sincerely, "forgive me for thinking of myself, but come with me from this terrible place and so long as your conscience can honestly claim my sisterly regard, it shall be yours."

The tears trembled on her long, dark lashes as she raised her eyes to Julia's face, but at that instant a rap sounded on the outer door and without replying, her companion rose and passed swiftly out into the hall.

The man whom she had known for several months only as "Monsieur" was standing in the wide, crimson draped hall, but the hangings were so thick that it was impossible to have overheard the conversation that had been carried on in low tones between the two.

Placing her hand upon his arm, Julia Webber led him without a word into the spacious parlor which was also draped, even more luxuriously than the other apartments, in costly fabrics of vivid scarlet.

Here she paused before him, looking into his eyes with orbs that blazed with anger, and through her tight drawn lips she fairly hissed the words, "Maurice Sinclair, your adopted sister has told me all. This is my house and beneath its roof you and she will never meet again."

Then, while he stood apparently amused at this new freak of a peculiar woman, she moved to a dainty desk, and filling out a check for many thousand pounds, signed it, and once more stepping before him, thrust it into his hand, saying calmly, "there is the amount which I have received from you. Now, go! and believe me, if you escape punishment at all other hands for your cowardly sins, the revenge of a woman's scorned devotion will at some time find you out."