“Perfectly. What say you to next Monday night?”
“I am at your service,” responded Stephano. “Monday will suit me admirably, and midnight shall be the hour. And now instruct me in the nature of the locality.”
“Come with me, and I will show you by which way you and your comrades must effect an entry,” said Antonio.
The valet and the robber-chief now moved away from the spot where they had stood to hold the above conversation; and the moment they had turned the adjacent angle of the mansion, Nisida hastened to regain her apartment by the private staircase—resolving, however, to see Wagner as early as possible in the morning.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE LAST MEETING OF AGNES AND THE STRANGER LADY.
While all nature was wrapped in the listening stillness of admiration at the rising sun, Fernand Wagner dragged himself painfully toward his home.
His garments were besmeared with mud and dirt; they were torn, too, in many places; and here and there were stains of blood, still wet, upon them.
In fact, had he been dragged by a wild horse through a thicket of brambles, he could scarcely have appeared in a more wretched plight.
His countenance was ghastly pale; terror still flashed from his eyes, and despair sat on his lofty brow.
Stealing through the most concealed part of his garden, he was approaching his own mansion with the air of a man who returns home in the morning after having perpetrated some dreadful deed of turpitude under cover of the night.