The name of Augustus Horton awakened all her terror of the persecution of a base and heartless profligate. She imagined herself already in his power--his slave--his to treat as his vile passion prompted. Wild with terror, she clung convulsively to her father. "No, no," she cried; "do not abandon me. I shall die; I shall go mad. Do you forget that that man is the murderer of my mother?" "Silence, silence!" whispered Gerald; "unhappy girl, do not infuriate him." "I hope, Mr. Leslie," said Craig, as Cora still clung to her father, "that you will not oblige us to have recourse to violence." "Kill me, kill me, sooner than abandon me to that man," cried Cora. The mulatto drew a knife from his pocket and handed it to the agonized father. "Kill her, master," he whispered; "better that than she should meet the fate of her mother." Gerald pushed the slave from him with a gesture of horror. "No, no!" he exclaimed; "all hope is not yet lost! Between this and to-morrow surely something can be done. I will see Gilbert. We will save you. Cora, my beloved; we will save you." Two of the men approached the father and daughter to take the Octoroon from Gerald's arms. But Cora only clung to him more convulsively. "Father, father!" she shrieked. At a gesture from Craig they seized her in their arms and dragged her away. Happily for the wretched girl, consciousness once more deserted her, and she sunk fainting in the arms of the brutal wretches whose business it was to secure her. Silas Craig looked on at this heart-rending scene with an evil light shining in his red, rat-like eyes. "For years and years, Mr. Gerald Leslie," he said, "you and the like of you have carried it with a high hand over me. But my turn has come at last, I guess. You look rather small to-day. It's a hard thing for a man to be so poor as to have to sell his favorite daughter." "Wretch!" cried the agonized father; "this is your hour of triumph; but remember that Heaven suffers such as you to prosper for a while that it may the better confound them in the end. A being capable of infamy such as this must be capable of crime. Guilty deeds long forgotten are sometimes strangely brought to light, and it may be your turn to grovel in the dust and ask for mercy of me." In spite of his hardihood in crime the color forsook Silas Craig's face, and left it of a dusky white. The random shot had struck him too forcibly. The man of guilt trembled. CHAPTER XXV. THE STORY OF PAULINE CORSI. All things went on at the Villa Moraquitos as calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary course had happened. Camillia and her father met constantly and the Spaniard still displayed his absorbing love for his daughter; but, a few days after the scene in the gambling-house, he announced to her his intention of making Pauline Corsi his wife.