no likely place. Even the bed stood high on tall brass legs, and
its short white quilt showed that nothing could be hidden there. One
object, however, that Christine Chaine had not sought forced itself
upon her notice--an object that, even in her distress of mind, she had
time to find extraordinary and unaccountable in this house of
extraordinary and unaccountable things. On the dressing-table was a
wig-stand of the kind to be seen in the window of a fashionable
_coiffeur_. It had a stupid, waxen face, and on its head was arranged
a wig of blond curly hair with long golden plaits hanging down on each
side, even as the plaits of Isabel van Cannan hung about her shoulders
as she lay among her pillows every morning. The thing gave Christine a
thrill such as all the horrors of that day had not caused her. So
innocent, yet so sinister, perched there above the foolish, waxen
features, it seemed symbolical of the woman who hid cruel and terrible
things behind her babylike airs and sleepy laughter.

Atop of these thoughts came the woman herself, emerging _en deshabille_
from her adjoining bathroom. The moment she saw Christine, she flung a
towel across her head, but too late for her purpose. The girl had seen
the short, crisp, almost snowy curls that were hidden by day under the
golden wig, and realized in an instant that she was in the presence of
a woman of a breed she had never known--mulatto, albino, or some
strange admixture of native and European blood. The golden hair,
assisted by artificial aids to the complexion, and her large
golden-brown eyes had lent an extraordinary blondness to the skin. But
the moment the wig was off, the mischief was out. The thickness of
eyelids and nostril, and a certain cruel, sensuous fulness of the lips
and jaw told the dark tale, and Christine wondered how she could ever
have been taken in, except that the woman before her was as clever as
she was cruel and unscrupulous. A tingling horror stole through her
veins as she stood there, sustaining a malignant glance and listening
dumfounded to an insolent inquiry as to what further spying she had
come to do.

"I beg your pardon," she stammered. "I knocked, and, getting no
answer, opened the door, hardly knowing what I did in my distress.
Roddy is missing from his bed, and I don't know where to look for him."

The other had turned away for a moment, adjusting the covering on her
head before a mirror. She may still have believed