Dead silence fell. Mollie stood looking down at the bustle of Broadway at one window, Mr. Ingelow at the other. He was pale--she flushed indignant red. She was grieved, and hurt, and cruelly mortified. She had found out how dearly she loved him, only to find out with it he was absolutely indifferent to her; he was ready to plead another man's cause, yield her up to her bolder lover. She could have cried with disappointment and mortification, and crying was not at all in Mollie's line. Never until now had she given up the hope that he still loved her. "It serves me right, I dare say," she thought, bitterly. "I have been a flirt and a triller, and I refused him cruelly, heartlessly, for that old man. Oh! if the past could be but undone, what a happy, happy creature I should be!" The oppressive silence lasted until Mrs. Sharpe re-entered with some needle-work. Then Mr. Ingelow rose and looked at his watch. "I believe I'll take a stroll down Broadway," he said, a little coldly. "Your friend Miriam will probably be here before I return. If not, there are books yonder with which to beguile the time." Mollie bowed, proudly silent, and Mr. Ingelow left the room for his morning constitutional. Miss Dane walked over, took a book, opened it, and held it before her face a full hour without turning a leaf. The face it screened looked darkly bitter and overcast. She was free from prison, only to find herself in a worse captivity--fettered by a love that could meet with no return. The bright morning wore on; noon came. Two o'clock brought dinner and Mr. Ingelow, breezy from his walk. "What!" he exclaimed, looking round, "no Miriam?" "No Miriam," said Mollie, laying down her book. "Mrs. Sharpe and I have been quite alone--she sewing, I reading." Mrs. Sharpe smiled to herself. She had been watching the young lady, and surmised how much she had read. "Why, that's odd, too," Mr. Ingelow said. "She promised to be here this morning, and Miriam keeps her promises, I think. However, the afternoon may bring her. And now for dinner, mesdames." But the afternoon did not bring her. The hours wore on--Mr. Ingelow at his easel, Mollie with her book, Susan Sharpe with her needle, conversation desultory and lagging. Since the morning a restraint had fallen between the knight-errant and the rescued lady--a restraint Mollie saw clearly enough, but could not properly understand. Evening came. Twilight, hazy and blue, fell like a silvery veil over the city, and the street-lamps twinkled through it like stars. Mr. Ingelow in an inner room had made his toilet, and stood before Mollie, hat in hand, ready to depart for the Walraven mansion.