fifteen--not more than that."

When they reached the house, which was located in a rather somber,
treeless street, Cowperwood was surprised to find the interior spacious
and tastefully furnished. Presently Mrs. Carter, as she was generally
known in society, or Hattie Starr, as she was known to a less
satisfying world, appeared. Cowperwood realized at once that he was in
the presence of a woman who, whatever her present occupation, was not
without marked evidences of refinement. She was exceedingly
intelligent, if not highly intellectual, trig, vivacious, anything but
commonplace. A certain spirited undulation in her walk, a seeming gay,
frank indifference to her position in life, an obvious accustomedness
to polite surroundings took his fancy. Her hair was built up in a
loose Frenchy way, after the fashion of the empire, and her cheeks were
slightly mottled with red veins. Her color was too high, and yet it
was not utterly unbecoming. She had friendly gray-blue eyes, which
went well with her light-brown hair; along with a pink flowered
house-gown, which became her fulling figure, she wore pearls.

"The widow of two husbands," thought Cowperwood; "the mother of two
children!" With the Colonel's easy introduction began a light
conversation. Mrs. Carter gracefully persisted that she had known of
Cowperwood for some time. His strenuous street-railway operations were
more or less familiar to her.

"It would be nice," she suggested, "since Mr. Cowperwood is here, if we
invited Grace Deming to call."

The latter was a favorite of the Colonel's.

"I would be very glad if I could talk to Mrs. Carter," gallantly
volunteered Cowperwood--he scarcely knew why. He was curious to learn
more of her history. On subsequent occasions, and in more extended
conversation with the Colonel, it was retailed to him in full.

Nannie Hedden, or Mrs. John Alexander Fleming, or Mrs. Ira George
Carter, or Hattie Starr, was by birth a descendant of a long line of
Virginia and Kentucky Heddens and Colters, related in a definite or
vague way to half the aristocracy of four or five of the surrounding
states. Now, although still a woman of brilliant parts, she was the
keeper of a select house of assignation in this meager city of perhaps
two hundred thousand population. How had it happened? How could it
possibly have come about? She had been in her day a reigning beauty.
She had been born to money and had married money. Her first husba