n Nadine Holt's breast all in an instant, and
seemed to fire her whole being.

She knew her lover's passionate adoration of a beautiful face, and then
and there the thought came to her: How long would he love Dorothy Glenn
if that pretty pink-and-white face were seamed and scarred?

She laughed--a low, strange, eerie laugh that quite startled the man as
he walked away.

Left to herself, Nadine Holt deliberately opened the hall door and stole
into the house. She had but one purpose in view, and that was to
confront her lover and Dorothy before all the invited guests.

There was nothing about the dark figure to attract especial attention,
and she glided through the corridor unnoticed.

Was it the hand of fate most terrible that guided her toward the
conservatory? The dark figure glided like a shadow toward the open door,
and then paused abruptly, for the low sound of voices fell upon her ear,
and one of them she recognized as that of her perfidious lover.

Through the softened pearly gloom she saw him sitting on the rustic
bench close--very close--to the slender, girlish figure in fleecy white,
and the sight made the blood in her veins turn to molten fire.

Like an evil spirit she crept toward them. She would--she _must_--know
what he was saying to his companion in that leafy bower.

She said to herself, of course it was Dorothy, and that they had stolen
away from the lights and the music for a few tender words with each
other, after the fashion of love-sick lovers.

It had not been so very long ago since he had been talking with her in
just that lover-like way, only their courtship had taken place in the
public parks, sitting on the benches, or walking lovingly arm in arm
along the crowded thoroughfares; and he had brought Dorothy to his own
grand home--Dorothy, her hated rival!--to enjoy this paradise of a
place, and to make love to her in this Eden bower of roses and scented,
murmuring, tinkling fountains.

"Dorothy!" he murmured in his rich, low, musical voice. How plainly she
heard the name! The rest of the sentence she could not catch, though she
crept nearer and nearer, and strained every nerve to listen. "I love you
as I have never loved anything in this life before," she heard him say,
"and my future without you would be unendurable. I can not endure it--I
will not!"

The poor wretch who listened grew mad as she heard the tender words
whispered into the ears of another by her false lover.

She crouc