Part 61 (1/2)

”None.” Laughing. ”You just dress yourselves in white sheets, or that, and hold a plate in your hands filled with whiskey and salt, and--there you are. You have no idea of the tremendous effect. You will be more like a corpse than anything you can imagine.”

”How cheerful!” murmurs Cecil. ”You make me long for the 'sheets and that.'”

”Do the whiskey and the salt ever blow up?” asks Molly, cautiously.

”Because if so----”

”No, they don't; of course not. Say nothing about it to the others, and we shall astonish them by and by. It is an awfully becoming thing, too,” says Potts, with a view to encouragement; ”you will look like marble statues.”

”We are trusting you again,” says Cecil, regarding him fixedly.

”Plantagenet, if you should again be our undoing----”

”Not the slightest fear of a _fiasco_ this time,” says Potts, comfortably.

CHAPTER XXIII.

”Here's such a coil! Come, what says Romeo?”

--Shakespeare.

As eleven o'clock strikes, any one going up the stairs at Herst would have stopped with a mingled feeling of terror and admiration at one particular spot, where, in a niche, upon a pedestal, a very G.o.ddess stands.

It is Molly, clad in white, from head to heel, with a lace scarf twisted round her head and shoulders, and with one bare arm uplifted, while with the other she holds an urn-shaped vase beneath her face, from which a pale-blue flame arises.

Her eyes, larger, deeper, bluer than usual, are fixed with sad and solemn meaning upon s.p.a.ce. She scarcely seems to breathe; no quiver disturbs her frame, so intensely does she listen for a coming footstep.

In her heart she hopes it may be Luttrell's.

The minutes pa.s.s. Her arm is growing tired, her eyes begin to blink against her will; she is on the point of throwing up the game, descending from her pedestal, and regaining her own room, when a footfall recalls her to herself and puts her on her mettle.

Nearer it comes,--still nearer, until it stops altogether. Molly does not dare turn to see who it is. A moment later, a wild cry, a smothered groan, falls upon her ear, and, turning her head, terrified, she sees her grandfather rush past her, tottering, trembling, until he reaches his own room, where he disappears.

Almost at the same instant the others who have been in the drawing-room, drawn to the spot by the delicate machinations of Mr.

Potts, come on the scene; while Marcia, who has heard that scared cry, emerges quickly from among them and pa.s.ses up the stairs into her grandfather's room.

There follows an awkward silence. Cecil, who has been adorning a corner farther on, comes creeping toward them, pale and nervous, having also been a witness to Mr. Amherst's hurried flight; and she and Molly, in their masquerading costumes, feel, to say the least of it, rather small.

They cast a withering glance at Potts, who has grown a lively purple; but he only shakes his head, having no explanation to offer, and knowing himself for once in his life to be unequal to the occasion.

Mrs. Darley is the first to break silence.

”What is it? What has happened? Why are you both here in your night-dresses?” she asks, unguardedly, losing her head in the excitement of the moment.

”What do you mean?” says Cecil, angrily. ”'Nightdresses'! If you don't know dressing-gowns when you see them, I am sorry for you. Plantagenet, what has happened?”

”It was grandpapa,” says Molly, in a frightened tone. ”He came by, and I think was upset by my--appearance. Oh, I hope I have not done him any harm! Mr. Potts, _why_ did you make me do it?”

”How could I tell?” replies Potts, who is as white as their costumes.

”What an awful shriek he gave! I thought such a stern old card as he is would have had more pluck!”