"I cannot," answered Rose. "Do you think I should go dancing after you to the hotels, shocking Mary Carr and the waiters out of their notions of propriety, without an urgent motive? Pray come along: we are obstructing the entrance." Mr. St. John indeed saw that a group of several ladies were gathered close behind him, waiting to go in. He stepped inside the hall--he had no other alternative--and so allowed them to pass. They moved noiselessly towards the broad staircase; but he drew aside with Rose. "Rose, this is beyond a joke," he said. "Why did you bring me here? I will wish you good morning." "Indeed," she murmured, clasping her agitated hands on his arm, in her fear lest, after all, he should escape her, "this is no joke. Do you suppose Mary Carr would lend herself to one? and she came with me. Pray come upstairs with me, Mr. St. John." "You forget," he began, in answer more to her evident excitement than to her words, "that--putting aside any objection I may experience--my presence here may not be acceptable to the family." "You will not see the family. They are not visible today." "Who are all these people going up the stairs?" he said, looking on in amazement, as more groups were silently bowed in by Silva. "It seems like a reception." "It is one," said Rose: "nevertheless the family do not hold it. There comes Madame de Nino! She is directing those strict eyes of hers towards us, and I shall catch a sharp lecture for standing whispering with you. Do come, Mr. St. John." "I cannot understand this, Rose. These visitors, flocking to the house, while, you say, the family are not visible! Why do they come, then? Why do you wish me to go up?" "There's--there's--a show upstairs today," stammered Rose "That is why they come. And I want you to see it." "A flower-show?" said Mr. St. John, somewhat mockingly. "A faded one," murmured Rose, as she took his hand, and drew him towards the staircase. His manner was hesitating, his step reluctant; and but for the young lady's pertinacity, which he could not resist without downright rudeness, he had certainly retreated. Involuntarily, he could not tell why or wherefore, the remembrance of a past scene came rushing to his mind; when he, Frederick St. John, had in like manner forced a resisting spirit up the stairs and into the room of a college-boy who was dying. At the head of the stairs they met Mary Carr, who held out a small sealed packet. "A commission was intrusted to me yesterday, Mr. St. John," she said, "that I would deliver this into your own hands. I have also a message----" "Which you can give him presently," interrupted Rose. He glanced at the packet; he glanced at the seal, "A.L. de C.;" he looked at the other side, at the strange, sprawling address. "Not a very elegant superscription," he observed, carelessly, as he slipped the parcel into the breast-pocket of his coat. "I don't recognize the handwriting." "Yet you were once familiar with it, Mr. St. John."