"Madame is waiting your pleasure," said the negro girl, who had remained standing near the curtain all this while, but too far distant to catch many of the words passing between the three visitors, which had all been uttered in a low tone.
"Ah, yes, we have kept her waiting too long, perhaps," said Leslie, "and who knows but the fates may be the more unkind to us for the neglect of their priestess." He was really not very well at his ease, but somewhat anxious to appear so, as all very bashful people can fully understand, when they remember the efforts they have sometimes made to appear the most impudent men in creation. Tom Leslie was not in the slightest degree bashful, and so the comparison fails in that regard; but he was more than a little nervous at the certainty which he felt of once more meeting the "red woman," and for that reason he wished to seem the man with no nerves whatever.
"It is my turn--I will go in," said Bell Crawford, rising from her chair and following the negro attendant within the curtain, which only parted a little to admit her and then swept down again to the floor, giving no glimpse to the two outsiders of what might be within.
The sky had now grown perceptibly darker, though it was still some hours to night; and at the moment when Bell Crawford entered the inner room of the sorceress the gathering thunder-storm burst in fury. The thunder was not as yet peculiarly heavy, and the flashes of lightning had often been surpassed in vividness; but the rain poured down in torrents and the gust of wind, which swept through the streets set windows rattling and doors and shutters banging at a rate which promised work for the carpenters. The two windows of the room looked out upon the street, though through closed blinds; and whether intentionally or inadvertently, the two in waiting drew two chairs to one of the windows, very near together, and sat there, watching the dashing rain and listening to the storm. Had there been any possibility of hearing the words spoken in the adjoining room, that possibility would now have been entirely destroyed by the noise of the storm; and whatever of curiosity either may have felt for the result of Bell's adventure, was rendered inefficient for the time. Meanwhile, something else was working of quite as much consequence.