Another week; a long, long week! And God knows what may not happen in that time." Some burning fever gnawed at his unquiet heart, some veiled danger weighed him down.
Clayton was waiting for the approach of the wife of that mysterious musical director whom he had never seen.
A fortunate sort of lingua Franca had been patched up between the unsuspicious Clayton and the dark-eyed duenna.

A few words of German, a little scattered French, and a bit of gibberish English enabled the two to hold occasional brief and amiable intercourse.
"What language does she really speak ?" often cried the baffled Clayton to the mocking Irma.
"Only pure Czech, my comrade," laughed the diva.

"And I will teach you the softest language of Love myself when we wander back into the blue Bohemian mountains to proud old Georgsburg.

My father was a Magyar, my mother," she softly said, "a Czech princess." While Clayton moved around, cautiously exhibiting himself as agreed upon, his mind was agitated with a hundred unknown fears.

He knew not the designs of his panther-footed enemies.
To his astonishment, Robert Wade was absent the whole last business day of the year from the Western Trading Company's offices, and this, too, when every pen was busied up to five o'clock.
And, the momentous election was to occur in the morning! He had lingered with his own annual summary until three o'clock, when the dejected face of Somers, the head accountant, had appeared at his office door.