"I will meet Godlike there," she said, and an inexplicable smile animated her face.
She placed a small poniard in the folds of her sash, and threw a heavy cloak, to which was attached a hood, over her form. She drew the hood over her face, and stood ready to depart.
The light was extinguished. She glided from the room, and down the stairs, and passed unobserved from the silent house. At the corner of the next street the carriage waited with the driver on the box.
"Who are you?" she said in a low voice.
"The Temple," answered the driver, and descended from the box, and opened the carriage door.
Esther entered, the door was closed, the carriage whirled away.
"What will be the result of the adventures of this night?" she thought, and her bosom heaved with mad agitation.
And as she was thus borne to the Temple, there was a woman watching by the bedside of an old man, in one of the chambers of the Broadway mansion,—Eleanor watching while her father slept.
Her night-dress hung in loose folds about her noble form, as she arose and held the dim light nearer to his gray hairs. There was agony stamped upon his face, even as he slept—an agony which was reflected in the pallid face and tremulous lips of his daughter.
"He sleeps!" she exclaimed in a low voice: "Little does he fancy that I know the fearful history which this night fell from his lips. And this night, before he retired to rest, he clasped me to his bosom, and said—" she blushed in neck and cheek and brow,—"that it was the dearest wish of his heart, that I should be united to Randolph."