Day
desires to see her."
The man would have shut the door in our faces, with the words, "I will
see if my lady is at home;" but John was prepared for him. He put his
foot between the door and the jamb, and his two hands against the door,
driving it to the wall with the man behind it. There he held him till we
were all in, then closed the door, and said to him, in a tone I had never
heard him use till that moment,
"Let lady Cairnedge know at once that Mr. Day desires to see her."
The man went. We walked into the white drawing-room, the same where I sat
alone among the mirrors the morning after I was lost on the moor. How
well I remembered it! There we waited. The gentlemen stood, but, John
insisting, I sat--my eyes fixed on the door by which we had entered.
In a few minutes, however, a slight sound in another part of the room,
caused me to turn them thitherward. There stood lady Cairnedge, in a
riding-habit, with a whip in her hand, staring, pale as death, at my
uncles. Then, with a scornful laugh, she turned and went through a door
immediately behind her, which closed instantly, and became part of the
wainscot, hardly distinguishable. John darted to it. It was bolted on the
outside. He sought another door, and ran hither and thither through the
house to find the woman. My uncles ran after him, afraid something might
befall him. I remained where I was, far from comfortable.
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