CHAPTER XIX
The Seducer’s Terrible End.
A few nights after Blodget’s escape found him walking the streets of San Francisco, but disguised as he thought too effectually to be recognized by any eye, however sharp.
There was a cloud upon Blodget’s brow as he emerged from the court into the semi-obscurity of Montgomery street, and his mind was evidently ill at ease. He tried to hum a fashionable opera air when he had walked a little distance, but there seemed something in his throat which choked him, and the sounds died upon his lips. Then he quickened his pace, when a young female emerged from a street which he was passing, and laid her hand upon his arm. He turned his head, and beheld Carlotta.
She was thinner than when he had seen her last, and looked as if she had recently been ill; but her dark eyes were as lustrous as then, and there was the same gloss upon her raven hair. At the moment that she emerged from the shade of the court, and laid her hand upon his, there was a strange and almost indescribable expression upon her dark countenance, but it passed away as quickly as a flight of birds over a stream, and when Blodget’s eyes met hers, they read nothing therein but pleasure at meeting him again.
‘Ah, my little wild rose of the islands!’ said he, ‘what are you doing at this hour of the night, when all such pretty wild birds should be in their nests.’
‘Well, I can’t say I was looking for you,’ returned Carlotta, ‘but I am glad that I have met you, nevertheless. But I should ask you where you have been wandering, you naughty man?’
‘Oh, I have been to the theatre, and then walked this way with a friend,’ returned Blodget. ‘But where are you staying—can you take me home with you?’
‘Fie!’ said Carlotta, playfully.
‘I really cannot part with you, my charmer,’ said Blodget. ‘If you cannot take me to your quarters, wherever they may be, you must come somewhere with me.’