As he passed through the hallway he heard the sound of a heavy fall. Glancing over his shoulder he saw that his victim had fallen senseless upon the floor.
He walked on and entered the room of Mrs. Bowers, his housekeeper, and not his sister, as he had pretended.
"I have told her," he said, "and she has fainted—as they mostly do. I am going away now, and I shall be absent a week. You must try and get her away from here before I come back!"
"Oh! you wicked man," said Mrs. Bowers, laughing, and shaking a finger at him. "Where shall I send her?"
"To the devil for aught I care!" said the gentleman, smarting with the recollection of Jennie's curse and the burning of his hundred dollars. "I care not where she goes so that I am rid of her. But take good care of the other one. Do not suffer her to escape."
He tossed a roll of bills into her lap and walked away humming a tune. In a few minutes after she heard him riding off down the road to the city. She locked her money carefully away in a drawer, then went up to the parlor where poor Jennie lay insensible upon the floor, and sitting down in an easy-chair, carelessly regarded the poor girl whom she had pitilessly helped to ruin.
It was a long time before the unhappy girl revived from her deep swoon, but the housekeeper made no effort to restore her to life though the thought crossed her mind more than once as she sat there that she might die without assistance.
"And no matter if she does," said the heartless woman to herself. "It would be all the better for her and for all parties concerned."
But it was not to be as Mrs. Bowers thought and almost wished. Life came back to the poor girl with a long, fluttering sigh, and the first thing she saw when she looked up was the angry face of the woman glaring down upon her.
"So you're alive, are you?" she said fiercely. "Why didn't you die and hide your shame and disgrace in the grave?"