Bowles seemed to push aside a thick and heavy curtain. The next moment a blaze of light shone around him as he entered a large apartment, pushing his frightened captive before him.
Jaquelina was blinded a moment as she came into the brilliant light from the outer rain and darkness; then the mist cleared; she looked up and found herself standing before the stateliest and most superbly handsome man she had ever beheld in her life.
Tall, dark, haughty, the outlaw chief was as kingly in his beauty as Lucifer, "star of the morning," might have looked in the hour of his fall.
His glossy curls of jet-black hair were thrown carelessly back from a brow as white and perfect as sculptured marble, his dark and piercing eyes gleamed star-like beneath the black, over-arching brows.
His nose was perfect in shape and contour; his rather stern and slightly sad lips were half concealed by a long curling mustache, black, like his hair.
Youth, power, and strength spoke in every line of the firm and well-knit figure in its careless yet well-fitting hunting suit of fine, dark-blue flannel.
One might have looked for such a face and form at the head of a gallant army, bravely leading his troops to victory or death, but never here in the den of robbers.
Jaquelina had one full glance into that darkly handsome face—one look that imprinted it forever on her memory—then the chief caught up a mask that lay upon a table near by, and fitted it hurriedly to his features; the low, deep, musical voice that bade them enter now exclaimed with repressed wrath and menace:
"Whom have we here, Bowles? And how have you dared bring a stranger into my presence while I remained unmasked?"