Yet Augustus Horton neither knocked nor rang for admission; there was a brass-plate upon the door; he simply pressed his finger against one of the letters engraved upon this plate, and the door opened slowly and noiselessly. The passage within was illumined by one ray of light. "Give me your hand, Donna Camillia," whispered the planter. The brave-hearted girl obeyed, and Augustus led her cautiously onward. As he did so she heard the door close behind her with a muffled sound. They ascended a narrow winding staircase, at the top of which they entered a long corridor, lighted by shaded gas-lamps, which emitted a subdued radiance. At the end of the corridor Augustus Horton opened the door of a room, into which he led Camillia. In this room she expected to find her father; but she was cruelly disappointed. The apartment was handsomely furnished, and lighted with a lamp which hung from the ceiling, and which like those in the corridor, shed a subdued and shadowy light; but it was empty. Camillia looked hurriedly around her. All her suspicions had returned at the aspect of the place to which the planter had brought her. The door opening by its mysterious spring, the dark passage and winding stair, the strange silence of the place in which their footsteps sounded as if they had been shod with felt--all combined to inspire terror. "My father! my father!" she exclaimed. "Where is he?" "Heaven knows," answered Augustus, "perhaps searching for you in the portico of the Opera-House. Camillia Moraquitos, you are young and new to a world in which men have passionate and revengeful hearts. You have much to learn, but you will take a lesson, it may be, ere long. This morning you insulted me; to-night you are in my power!" CHAPTER XXII. THE ENCOUNTER IN THE GAMBLING-HOUSE. As the planter uttered the horrible threat, contained in our last chapter, every drop of blood fled from the cheeks and lips of Camillia Moraquitos, leaving them pale and colder than marble. "This morning you insulted me--to-night you are in my power!" It was then as she expected--as she had feared. She was entrapped--cajoled--in the power of a villain and a hypocrite. She knew not even in what quarter of the city this mysterious house was situated. She was utterly ignorant of its character or its occupants. It might be the den of a band of thieves--the haunt of a gang of murderers--and she was alone, alone with a man who evidently hated her with the vengeful hate of a wicked and vindictive soul. Yet even in this terrible emergency, her courage did not forsake her. Her high and noble spirit rebounded after the shock which had, for one brief moment, depressed it. She looked at Augustus Horton, gazing upon him with such a glance of mingled horror and loathing, that the meanest hound would have shrunk from the contemptuous expression of her superb countenance.