It was a waiter with a card upon a tray; Molly held out her hand for the bit of pasteboard, glanced at it, and gave a start and a cry.
“Is anything the matter?” Rosina asked, reaching for the card. Her friend gave it to her, and as her eyes fell upon the name she turned first white and then red.
“It can’t be that he is here in Zurich!” she exclaimed.
“This is his card, anyway.”
“Mercy on us!”
“Shall he come up here,—he had better, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” she gasped. “I’m too surprised to think! The idea of his coming here this afternoon! Why, I never thought of such a thing. He said good-bye forever last night. I—”
“Show monsieur to the room,” Molly said to the man, cutting Rosina short in the full tide of her astonishment.
“Of course you must see him,” she said, as the door closed, “and, not being entirely devoid of curiosity, I can’t help feeling awfully glad to think that now I shall see him too.”
She quitted the divan as she spoke and went to the mirror over the mantelpiece. There was something in the action that suddenly recalled Rosina to her senses, and she sprang to her feet and disappeared into the sleeping-room beyond, returning in two or three minutes bearing evidence of Ottillie’s deft touch. She found Molly still before the mirror, and as her own reflection appeared over her friend’s shoulder the other nodded and laughed.