could
cry "_Entrez!_" it was flung open and Von Ibn strode into the room. The
first glance at his face showed both that something was gone all wrong,
and most horribly so.

Rosina, flushed afresh, went towards him, holding out her hand and
wondering if it was anything in connection with Molly that had produced
such an utter blackness.

"This is a very great surprise," she began, but he interrupted her at
once.

"_Comme je vous ai cherche!_" he cried, with violence. "Why are you not
gone to the Victoria as you say--as I ask you to?" His face was like a
thunder-storm.

The corners of her mouth felt suddenly traitorous; she tried to speak,
beginning, "I did not know--" but he broke in, and went hotly on with:

"Naturally you did not know, but I had already known! One could not, of
course, expect me to get up to ride on that most uncomfortable train
which you chose, but of course also I came on the first train leaving
after I did wake up."

Molly turned abruptly to the window and leaned as far out as she could,
her handkerchief pressed tightly over her mouth. Rosina wished that her
friend might have been anywhere else; even during what is commonly
called "a scene" two are infinitely better company than three.

"How most absurd I have been made," Von Ibn continued wrathfully, "in a
cab from hotel to hotel hunting for you! Do you think I have ever done
so before? Do you think I have found it very amusing to-day? Naturally I
go from the Gare to the Victoria, where I have told you to go. I take
there a room, and tell the _garcon_ to bring my card to madame; and in
ten minutes, as I am getting me out of the dust of that most abominable
middle-day train, he returns to say that no such as madame is within the
house. _Figurez-vous?_ Why are you acted so? Why are you always so oddly
singular?"

Rosina appeared struck dumb by the torrent of his words; she stood pink
and silent before his towering blackness. Molly, at the window, judged
it prudent to interfere, and, turning, began:

"It's all my fault, monsieur. Rosina wanted to go to the Victoria; she
wept when she found that she couldn't, but I was here already and we
wanted to be together, and so she consented to come with me and live by
the lake."

Von Ibn turned his eyes upon the new speaker, and their first expression
was one of deep displeasure. But Molly's eyes were of that brown which
is almost bronze, and fringed by eyelashes that were irresistibly long
and cu