hat other one was
now dead to her also. What was there left to her in the world? The
charity of her aunt, and Lotta's triumph, and Ziska's love? No indeed!
She would bear neither the charity, nor the triumph, nor the love. One
other visitor came to the house that day. It was Rebecca Loth. But Nina
refused to see Rebecca. "Tell her," she said to Souchey, "that I cannot
see a stranger while my father is lying dead." How often did the idea
occur to her, throughout the terrible length of that day, that "he"
might come to her? But he came not. "So much the better," she said to
herself. "Were he to come, I would not see him."

Late in the evening, when the little lamp in the room had been already
burning for some hour or two, she called Souchey to her. "Take this
note," she said, "to Anton Trendellsohn."

"What! to-night?" said Souchey, trembling.

"Yes, to-night. It is right that he should know that the house is now
his own, to do what he will with it."

Then Souchey took the note, which was as follows:

My father is dead, and the house will be empty to-morrow.
You may come and take your property without fear that you
will be troubled by NINA BALATKA.

CHAPTER XV

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 sh