While the financier was contentedly musing in his chair beside the fire, his niece was hurrying into the park, wrapped in a dark cloak and thick veil.

She had slipped out noiselessly, a few minutes after she left the library.

The sun had completely set now and it was damp and cold, with the dead leaves, and the sodden autumn feeling in the air.

Zara Shulski shivered, in spite of the big cloak, as she peered into the gloom of the trees, when she got nearly to the Achilles statue.

The rendezvous had been for six o'clock; it was now twenty minutes past, and it was so bad for Mirko to wait in the cold.