Five minutes after this the carriage stopped at a low door, in a dark but highly respectable-looking street.
The negro coachman kept his seat, but Augustus sprang on to the pavement and handed Camillia out of the vehicle.
The door before which they had stopped appeared to be closed so securely as to defy all the burglars in New Orleans.
Yet Augustus Horton neither knocked nor rang for admission; there was a brass-plate upon the door; he simply pressed his finger against one of the letters engraved upon this plate, and the door opened slowly and noiselessly.
The passage within was illumined by one ray of light. "Give me your hand, Donna Camillia," whispered the planter. The brave-hearted girl obeyed, and Augustus led her cautiously onward.
As he did so she heard the door close behind her with a muffled sound.
They ascended a narrow winding staircase, at the top of which they entered a long corridor, lighted by shaded gas-lamps, which emitted a subdued radiance.
At the end of the corridor Augustus Horton opened the door of a room, into which he led Camillia.
In this room she expected to find her father; but she was cruelly disappointed.
The apartment was handsomely furnished, and lighted with a lamp which hung from the ceiling, and which like those in the corridor, shed a subdued and shadowy light; but it was empty.