Elizabeth started up and went on dressing; as was usual with her after one of those strange excitements, a sudden fever crimsoned her cheeks and brightened her eyes.
She went downstairs and received her guest with affable grace, which contrasted painfully with her late excitement, and before the evening was over, seemed to have forgotten the hasty words she had spoken to Mellen, and was like her old self again.
CHAPTER XLV.
THE TIGER IN HIS DEN.
IT was a small room, in one of those mysterious hotels in the narrow streets near the Battery, which appear to be usually appropriated to foreigners, and about which dark-whiskered, sallow-faced individuals may be seen lingering at all hours of the day, their very faded, seedy appearance calling up images of duns, scant dinners, and a whole train of petty evils.
The chamber was small, but not uncomfortably furnished, though the articles had originally been of the tawdry fashion which such places affect, and had probably not been new by several stages when first established there.
The remains of a fire smouldered in the little grate, but the ashes were strewn over the hearth. The torn and frayed carpet was littered with loose cards, and the whole apartment was in hopeless confusion which added greatly to its original discomfort.
In the centre of the room was a small table covered with empty champagne bottles and glasses, standing in half dried puddles of wine, with a bronze receiver overflowing with cigar ashes all huddled untidily together, and giving repulsive evidence of a long night of dissipation.
The low bedstead had its moth-eaten, miserable attempt at a canopy swept back and heaped carelessly on the dirty counterpane by a man in a restless slumber, just as he had thrown himself down, ready dressed, long after daylight peered in through the broken shutters.