When Souchey left the room with the note, Nina went to the door and
listened. She heard him turn the lock below, and heard his step out
in the courtyard, and listened till she knew that he was crossing the
square. Then she ran quickly up to her own room, put on her hat and her
old worn cloak--the cloak which aunt Sophie had given her--and returned
once more into the parlour. She looked round the room with anxious
eyes, and seeing her desk, she took the key from her pocket and put
it into the lock. Then there came a thought into her mind as to the
papers; but she resolved that the thought need not arrest her, and
she left the key in the lock with the papers untouched. Then she went
to the door of her father's room, and stood there for a moment with her
hand upon the latch. She tried it ever so gently, but she found that
the door was bolted. The bolt, she knew, was on her side, and she could
withdraw it; but she did not do so; seeming to take the impediment as
though it were a sufficient bar against her entrance. Then she ran down
the stairs rapidly, opened the front door, and found herself out in the
night air.
It was a cold windy night--not so late, indeed, as to have made her
feel that it was night, had she not come from the gloom of the dark
parlour, and the glimmer of her one small lamp. It was now something
beyond the middle of October, and at present it might be eight o'clock.
She knew that there would be moonlight, and she looked up at the sky;
but the clouds were all dark, though she could see that they were
moving along with the gusts of wind. It was very cold, and she drew her
cloak closer about her as she stepped out into the archway.
Up above her, almost close to her in the gloom of the night, there was
the long colonnade of the palace, with the lights glimmering in the
windows as they always glimmered. She allowed herself for a moment to
think who might be there in those rooms--as she had so often thought
before. It was possible that Anton might be there. He had been there
once before at this time in the evening, as he himself had told her.
Wherever he might be, was he thinking of her? But if he thought of her,
he was thinking of her as one who had deceived him, who had tried to
rob him. Ah! the day would soon come in which he would learn that he
had wronged her. When that day should come, would his heart be bitter
within him? "He will certainly be unhappy for a time," she said; "but
he is hard and will recover, and she will console him. It will be
better so. A Christian and a Jew should never love each other."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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