"Who can it be?" again ejaculated the Madam, as she stood in the center of the room, with the light of the candle on one side of her florid face.
To which Corkins, who stood behind her, his slender form lost in her capacious shadow, responded in a quivering voice, "Who can it be?"
Much troubled and very angry, and not knowing upon whom to vent her anger, the Madam turned upon her trembling satellite, and addressing him by numerous titles, not one of which but was more vigorous than elegant or complimentary, she bade him,—
"Run for your life. Answer the hell of the secret passage! Don't be foolin' away your time, when the very devil's to pay and no pitch hot. Cut!"
Corkins accordingly "cut," or, to speak in a less classical phrase, he glided from the room.
How anxiously the Madam waited there, in her most secret chamber, with her finger to her lip, and the candle-light on one side of her face!
"Who can it be? Only four persons in the world know of this secret passage. It can't be this devil from Philadelphia? O, I shall do somebody a mischief! I can't endure this any longer,—"
Hark! There are footsteps in the corridor; they approach the Madam's room. She fixes her small black eyes upon the door, with the intensity of a—cat, contemplating a rat-hole.
"This way," cries the voice of Corkins, and he enters the room, followed by two persons, one of whom is taller than the other, and both of whom wear caps and cloaks.
"Has he come back?" cries the taller of the two, in a voice that trembles with anxiety and fear,—he lifts his cap, and discloses the face of Herman Barnhurst.