she had come to rub salt into my wounds by archly recalling to me that she had never approved of me and that if her sister proved weak enough to succumb to my manly virtues-whose existence she herself still doubted-it was vital that she remain the calm, dispassionate counselor and guide to steer her sister safely through the reefs and treacherous currents which my questionable character was inexorably certain to set before poor helpless Alice as a way of life.

There was a kind of fitting justice to Marion’s visit I had, as my readers will recall, originally had that treacherous armchair in my Snuggery fashioned expressly for the purpose of holding Marion in it and rendering her quite helpless while I went about the delicious procedure of ensnaring her sister Alice and compelling her to submit to my desires. And as you also know, at the last moment, Marion had not been able to keep the appointment-though Alice surely had no reason to complain of lack of attention she had received from me on that occasion!

I kept my face as bland as I could to bide the sudden delighted emotion that surged through me as I beheld Marion here on the very threshold of my apartment, the first step across which would lead to her coerced surrender and my own sweet revenge! And I congratulated myself upon my wisdom in having agreed to the landlord’s insistence that I rent not only my modest suite of sitting-room and two bed-rooms but the unusual “lumber room”-so he had called it-which had once actually been a confinement chamber for lunatics; the house had once been built as a private lunatic asylum, and to this room which I now referred to as my Snuggery, inmates who ultimately were destined for Bedlam had been confined. I may say with some little pride as well as amusement that since my acquisition of this admirably equipped room, it had been put to far better diversions!

Marion wore a fashionable green frock with high collar and full bodice and long, low skirts that were puffed and descended over her ankles.