She recalled their first meeting in the little house in Hobart Place, she remembered the thoughtful voice with which, as he had looked her over, he had agreed that she might be "useful." She thought of his caresses, his smile of affection, his comradeship, and she shuddered.

Walter Hine's words had informed her to-day to what use her father had designed her.

She was his decoy.
She lay upon her bed with her hands clenched, repeating the word in horror.

His decoy! The moonlight poured through the open window, the music of the stream filled the room.

She was in the house in which she had been born, a place mystically sacred to her thoughts; and she had come to it to learn that she was her father's decoy in a vulgar conspiracy to strip a weakling of his money.