He strode rapidly from the room, and Florence, listening to his retreating footsteps, blushed vividly. For many minutes she stood by the piano just as he had left her, her head bowed in a subdued manner, and her thoughts communing with themselves in a wild tumult. One contemplating her then and there would have guessed that her heart followed Karl Zikoff—that had he thrown himself at her feet she would not have spurned him.
Karl, on reaching the hall, seized his hat and rushed into the open air. It was chilly and damp without; not cold enough to freeze, penetrating and deadening to the blood.Large, soggy snow-flakes fell, and melted as soon as they touched the wet ground. The sky was of a leaden hue, and the atmosphere forbidding and uncomfortable.
Shivering, and drawing his coat closely over his breast, Karl hastened down the road and into Dalton. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes glittered unnaturally, and on his face was an expression of reckless despair.
His rapid gait soon brought him to the stairs that led to his teaching-room. Ascending in mad haste, he entered, and closed the door behind him with a fling. Then he threw himself into a chair, pressed his hands to his head, and endeavored to collect his chaotic thoughts.
“This must not go on. Something shall be done. I will play this passive part no longer. For unless the end comes soon I shall go mad. If all is to be in vain, if justice is never to prevail, the sooner I know it, and leave Dalton, the better. To remain here, where my true name is regarded with horror, to live in continual temptation, and on the very verge of self-exposure, is unbearable. Oh, Florence, you do not know the awful barrier that separates us! I shall never offer you a false or dishonored name; and may the Father above help me to keep this resolution! Yes, I will act! I will dog Geoffrey Haywood’s footsteps; I will penetrate the secret of Rocky Beach to its innermost detail. And I will begin operations to-night!”
He arose and walked about the room. He now became conscious of a feeling of strange languor. A numbness and dull pain seized his limbs and extended to his head. He was conscious that there was an unnatural heat on his brow, and that his pulse was bounding at a rapid rate. Was he going to be ill? He contemplated this possibility with alarm, and with a rebellious feeling.
Suddenly there came a knock at the door. Karl started in surprise, but, recollecting himself, muttered:
“It is Kate Heath. She was to have taken a lesson at this time, but I had hoped something would keep her away. It would be better for her—I hope what I suspect is not true. Come in!” he called out, almost savagely.
Kate Heath entered. She gave a flitting glance at Karl, walked to the piano, and then looked at him more deliberately.
“You are not well,” she exclaimed, with a flush on her cheeks and an expression of anxious interest.