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The last guest has departed. We of the household have gone up to our rooms. Now that it is all over, I feel strangely inclined to sit down and have a good cry. In the solitude of my own room Marmaduke's words and glances come back to me, making me miserable, now that excitement is no longer at hand to help me to forget. One by one they return with cruel clearness.
If he would only come up from that horrid smoking-room and be good-natured once more and make friends with me! I think I could forgive and forget everything, and look upon the remembrance of this ball with much delight and satisfaction.
My slight jealously of Blanche Going has disappeared, and weighs not at all in the scale with my other miseries. Indeed, I have almost forgotten the incident in which she figured.
Hark! a distant door bangs. Now surely he is coming. Will He enter my room first, I wonder, to speak to me as he always does? Or will he at once shut himself morosely into his dressing-room?
Steps upon the stairs, steps along the corridor. A laugh.
"Good-night" from Sir Mark Gore. "Good-night," heartily returned by Marmaduke. Bah! how needlessly I have worried myself! He is not angry at all. If he can jest and talk so easily with the cause of all our dispute, he can certainly entertain no bitter thoughts towards me.
I hear Marmaduke cross the inside room and approach mine. I feel confident he is coming to "make it up" with me. I turn my chair so as to face the door and be ready to meet him half-way in the reconciliation; though—lest he may think me too eager—I find it my duty to let a gently aggrieved shadow fall upon my face.
The door opens, and he comes in, walks deliberately to my dressing-table, lights a candle, and then, without so much as a glance at the fireplace, where I sit, prepares to return to his room.
"Marmaduke!" I cry, in dismay, springing to my feet.