"Why, no; and it's strange, too, for she made a mistake, gave me the address of a vacant house, and her gold passementerie came back here. I was certain she would be back here, fussing about it; and I tell Sammy it's lucky she made the mistake, so she will have to come back here. He has the warrant for her arrest, and she'll never get out of Haines & Co.'s without a policeman's escort!"
"Won't she?" muttered Fedora, with a low, gurgling laugh of sarcastic amusement. She tripped away in a hurry, in spite of her pretended mirth, and did not breathe freely until she was out of the store and in the cab that was waiting for her near the sidewalk.
"Whew! what a narrow escape!" she muttered. "So I have been watched and almost trapped while I believed myself triumphant!"
An ugly look crossed the pretty blonde face, and she continued, angrily:
"I wonder who Sammy Hall can be that those girls talked about so familiarly? He must be the man that helped me put the girl in the carriage, and that I met afterward in the street, and snubbed so coolly. He has taken revenge on me by ferreting out the place where I left Kathleen Carew, and rescuing her from her fate. Heigho! I think I had better leave for New York right away. Philadelphia will be too hot a place to hold me for a while. If I had the money I would go to Boston and look up my runaway bird, and Ivan at the same time. He promised to send me three hundred dollars this week. He had better do it, for I've got a hold on him, now, thanks to that girl's disclosure, that he can't shake off."
[CHAPTER XXX.]
"MY DARLING GIRL, I'M AS FOND OF YOU AS EVER!"
Sweetheart, name the day for me,
When we two shall wedded be;
Make it ere another moon,
While the meadows are in tune.
Edmund Clarence Stedman.