The gentlemen barring her passage instantly made way, and Mollie
turned to ascend the staircase.
"I'm going to my room, Guardy," she condescended to say, with her foot
on the first carpeted step, "and you will please send Lucy up with tea
and toast immediately. I'm a great deal too tired to offer any
explanation to-night. I feel as if I had been riding about in a
hackney-carriage for a century or two, like Peter Rugg, the missing
man--if you heard of Peter;" with which Miss Dane toiled slowly and
wearily up the grand staircase, and the group of gentlemen were left in
the hall below blankly gazing in one another's faces.
"Eminently characteristic," observed Mr. Ingelow, the first to break the
silence, with a soft laugh.
"Upon my word," said Dr. Oleander, with his death's-head smile, "Miss
Mollie's return is far more remarkable than her departure! That young
lady's _sang-froid_ requires to be seen to be believed in."
"Where can she have been?" asked Lawyer Sardonyx, helplessly taking
snuff.
The two men most interested in the young lady's return said nothing:
they were far beyond that.
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