The door--which was used all the night through for the entrance and egress of the gamblers who frequented the house--was only fastened by this spring, and therefore yielded to force more easily than an ordinary barrier. Once in the street, Paul and his friends were safe. The gamblers dared not pursue them another step, for to do so would have been to reveal the secret of the gaming-house, which, as the reader knows, held its ground in defiance of the laws of Louisiana. Mad with baffled rage and fury, Augustus Horton returned to his own house to await the coming of the morrow which would perhaps dawn upon a deadly encounter between himself and Don Juan Moraquitos. To his surprise, he received no tidings from the Spaniard, but a little after noon his mulatto valet handed him two letters. One was in the handwriting of Camillia Moraquitos. It breathed the contempt which a noble mind feels for the cowardice of a dastard. It ran thus: "As the life of a beloved father is far too valuable to be risked in an encounter with a wretch so degraded as yourself, Don Juan will never be told the true history of the events of last night. Rest therefore in security beneath contempt, too low for revenge." The second letter was from Paul Lisimon. It was even briefer than that of Camillia. "You shall yet answer to me for the outrage committed on one who is dearer to me than life. For to-day you triumph; but a day of reckoning will come ere long. I wait. "PAUL LISIMON." CHAPTER XXIII. THE FATAL DAY. The bullet wound which had prostrated Gilbert Margrave in the forest at Iberville was a very serious one. For many days and nights he lay in one of the apartments of the Pavilion, near Lake Pontchartrain, in a state which was not entirely without danger. But he had the best medical attendance which New Orleans could afford, and the tenderest care which affection can secure for the object on which it lavishes its wealth. Night and day Cora Leslie and the mulatto slave Toby watched beside the pillow of the wounded man. It was they and they alone who listened to the wandering accents of delirium; they who soothed and comforted in the hour of suffering; they who cheered and animated when the danger was past, and the first faint glimpses of returning health re-illumined the cheek of the invalid. Gerald Leslie was away from home. When the boat carrying Gilbert Margrave, Cora, Mortimer and Toby reached the Pavilion, the planter had already departed for New York, leaving a few brief lines addressed to his daughter, telling her only that urgent business had called him from the South. The father and daughter had therefore never met since that hour in which the Octoroon had accused Gerald Leslie of being the cause of her mother's death.