He walked up and down the room, while his servants quickly executed his orders. And soon every vestige of the evening’s untasted repast and extinguished fire was removed. And the clean hearth and glowing grate invited Alexander to repose himself in his easy chair.
After a while Pina appeared with the table linen in her hand, and inquired, respectfully:
“If you please, sir, will you have the breakfast laid here, or in the dining-room?”
“In the dining-room, of course,” answered Mr. Lyon.
“The dining-room,” as the reader knows, was but a cozy, elegant, little recess, curtained off from the drawing-room, and only large enough to hold a small table and two chairs, for the young couple’s tête-à-tête dinners.
As Pina now drew aside the crimson curtain, she uttered a wild scream, and stood transfixed and gazing down upon some object near her feet.
Alexander sprang up to see what had frightened her; but as he put aside the curtain, and saw what was under it, he started back with an irrepressible cry of horror.
CHAPTER XXVII
A GREAT DISCOVERY.
Oh, fatal opportunity!
That work’st our thoughts into desires, desires