Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/70

 women were virtuous only through fear of being found out.

Spiser's ideals were no higher than himself, and Spiser was merely a crafty, masterful brute.

Nan's clear eyes, her air of good breeding, her manner with its mixture of girlish candor and reserve, her conversation and dress, which bore every earmark of education and refinement, conveyed nothing to him beyond the fact that an unusual and uncommonly attractive young woman had arrived within his field of activities ready to walk into a properly constructed web.

She was unprotected, unattached, with no plausible excuse for being there, therefore she must of necessity be one with the women he knew best, though of an unquestionably superior and fascinating type.

It was all quite clear in Mr. Spiser's mind, yet he took the precaution to bring his spinster sister to call when next he came to the hotel for the purpose of advancing his acquaintance with Nan.

Spiser 's sister was a faded, pale-eyed little woman, who had a way of accompanying