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"I am sorry that this should have occurred. I feel myself blameless, though; and when Lady Marian de Winstanley makes the apology she owes me, and which she also owes herself, I shall be glad to forget that it has ever happened."

But, before she could sail gracefully off, the Lady Marian had started up, and, seizing Macfarren by the arm nervously, cried out, in a voice full of distress:

"Let us return to your lodgings. I am better there than elsewhere in this strange inn, and there I will remain alone with thee the seven days thou sayest it will take for my father to reach me."

Poor Mrs. Van Tromp!

In moments of great excitement all kinds and classes of people are apt to fall into the same homely idiomatic language. Therefore Mrs. Van Tromp said, or rather shouted, at this terrible instant, "The brazen hussy!" and with one fierce scowl that took in both Macfarren and the Lady Marian, and with a wild rustle of draperies, she flew down the corridor, the swish-swish of her trained dress sounding like the flapping wings of a frightened domestic fowl.