"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