"Half an hour," she sighed, shivering and crouching over the blaze. "What an age to wait; and yet I'm afraid not long enough to let them all get to bed and asleep. What if I should be seen!"
She dropped her face into her hands with a low groan. It was some minutes before she lifted it again for another glance at the clock; a wan, weary, haggard face, full of dread and distress, but with no tears in the burning eyes.
Slowly the moments dragged themselves along till at last the minute hand pointed to the half hour, when she rose, wrapped herself in a large dark shawl, putting it over her head listened at her door for a moment, to make sure that all was quiet, then glided softly down the stairs, let herself out at a back door, and creeping along close to the wall of the house, then in the shadow of the trees that lined the avenue, gained at length the clump of evergreens at its farther end.
A biting north wind swept the hard, frozen ground, and rustled the dry leaves at her feet, as she stood leaning against a tree in an intensely listening attitude. It seemed to pierce to her very vitals, and shuddering and trembling with the cold, and nervous dread, she drew the shawl more closely about her, while straining her eyes through the gloom to catch a glimpse of him whom she had come to meet; for there was no light save that shining in the winter sky.
She had waited but a moment, when a stealthy step drew near, and a tall form wrapped in a cloak, stood before her.
"Here first?" he said in a cautious whisper.
"Yes," she answered, in the same low key, and with a sudden catching of her breath, "Oh, why are you here?"
"For my own advantage," he answered half defiantly, "and," in a threatening tone, "you'd better have a care how you betray me."
"I have no desire to do so," she returned, with a weary sigh, "but you must go, and at once; you will ruin me if you stay; you must see that."