Chuckling over his success, he left the house and prepared to face the raging storm outside on his way back to the distant city whence he had come.
Crushing his hat down over his face, he hurried down the marble steps, pausing at the bottom in surprise at seeing the cloaked figure of a female in the act of ascending the steps.
The glare of a street-lamp shone full on the scene. Curiosity prompted him to stare at the beautiful white face upraised timidly to his own.
As he did so, his own face whitened with horror, his eyes dilated, his limbs trembled with fear.
"My God!" he muttered, hoarsely; and turning, fled from the spot in mad haste, like one pursued by fiends.
He believed that he had seen a veritable ghost, for it was the pale, lovely face of Kathleen Carew into which he had gazed so wildly—Kathleen, whom he believed dead. So he fled from the spot as wildly as his trembling limbs would permit.
Kathleen had always disliked and despised Ivan Belmont, so she only smiled scornfully at his precipitate flight, and began to ascend the marble steps, her heart beating with joy at the thought of meeting her father again.
"I wonder if James will be frightened, too, and run away, thinking me a ghost?" she murmured, with a sad little smile, as she rang the bell.
But it was not James who opened the door to her; it was a total stranger, who stared in surprise at the sight of a beautiful, refined-looking young girl out alone on such a stormy night.
All the old servants had been discharged after Kathleen's death, because they had irritated Mrs. Carew by grieving after their young mistress.