"Let it be so, or beware! A blood-hound on your track would be less deadly than I! I will be here again, and yet again, to see for myself that you keep your word."
She strode to the door, opened it, and stood in the illuminated ball. Johnson just had time to vanish from the key-hole and no more. Down the stair-way pealed the wild, melancholy music of a German waltz; from the dining-room came the clink and jingle of silver, and china, and glass. The woman's haggard face filled with scorn and bitterness as she gave one fleeting, backward glance.
"They say there is a just and avenging Heaven, yet Carl Walraven is master of all this. Wealth, love, and honor for him, and a nameless grave for her; the streets, foul and deadly, for me. The mill of the gods may grind sure, but it grinds fearfully slow—fearfully slow!"
They were the last words Carl Walraven heard her utter. She opened the house door, gathered her threadbare shawl closer around her, and fluttered away in the wild, wet night.
CHAPTER II.
"CRICKET."
The little provincial theater was crowded from pit to dome—long tiers of changing faces and luminous eyes. There was a prevalent odor of stale tobacco, and orange-peel, and bad gas; and there was bustle, and noise, and laughter, and a harsh collection of stringed instruments grinding out the overture.
There were stamps and calls for the tawdry curtain to rise, when a gentleman entered, sauntered up to a front seat, took up a bill and began to read it—a tall, middle-aged, rather distinguished-looking man, black and bearded, with piercing eyes, superfine clothes, and a general aristocratic air about him.
People paused to look again at him—for he was a stranger there—but nobody recognized him, and Mr. Carl Walraven read his bill undisturbed.