As the flickering rays of the street lamp fell athwart her face, the features of Nadine Holt were clearly revealed, her black eyes blazing, and her jet black hair streaming wildly about her face.
"How strange!" she panted, "that this idea of fortune telling should have come to me as a means of gaining my living! I was driven to do something. And that he should have been the very first patron to come to me—he, of all others! He is tracking me down because I maimed the girl whom he is so soon to wed—yes, tracking me down to throw me into prison—and yet he was once my lover! It is always the way. When a man's heart grows cold to one love, and another's face has charmed him, it seems to me as though men have a cruel, feverish desire to thrust the first love from them at whatever cost. But I will be revenged upon him! I will live to make his very life a torture; but I shall do it through Dorothy Glenn. I will go to Dorothy Glenn at once, and we shall see what will happen then."
Meanwhile, after much fumbling and imprecations loud and deep, Kendal succeeded in striking a match and finding the overturned bit of wax taper, which he hastily lighted, peering cautiously into the inky darkness which surrounded him.
He was tired and exhausted, and he told himself that he would turn in at the nearest hotel, take a good night's rest, and mature his plans on the morrow for finding Dorothy.
Meanwhile, let us go back, dear reader, to the hour in which our heroine, little Dorothy, decided to leave Gray Gables.
For some moments after Harry Kendal had left her in anger in the corridor she stood quite still—stood there long after the sound of his footsteps had died away, trying to realize the full purport of his words—that their engagement was at an end, and that they had parted forever.
The whole world seemed to stand still about her. Then, like one suddenly dazed, she turned and crept into her own room. Katy was there awaiting her.
She suffered the girl to place her in a chair, to take the faded blossoms from her hand and from her corsage, to unfasten the strings of pearls, and to remove her ball dress.
By degrees she had informed Katy of her regaining her sight, and the poor girl's joy knew no bounds.
She wondered greatly how Dorothy could feel so downcast in such an hour, and she never once heeded Dorothy's sad words—that she was going to leave Gray Gables before the dawn, as there was no one there who loved her.