Osborne blinked and stared with the air of a man not thoroughly awake, though it was his mind, not his body, that was torpid.
"Mrs.," he said, "not Miss?"
"No, sir, Mrs."
"I'll be there in five minutes," he hissed with a fierce arousing of his faculties, and never before had he flung on his clothes in such a flurry of haste; in less than five minutes he was flying down the stairs.
"Forgive me!" broke from his lips, as he entered the drawing-room, and "Forgive me!" his visitor was saying to him in the same instant.
It was pitiful to see her—she, ever so enthroned in serenity, from whom such a thing as agitation had seemed so remote, was wildly agitated now. That pathetic pallor of the aged when their heart is in labor now underlay her skin. Her lips, her fingers, trembled; the tip of her nose, showing under her half-raised veil, was pinched.
"The early hour—it is so distressing—I beg your forgiveness—I am in most dreadful trouble——"
"Please sit down," he said, touching her hand, "and let me get you some breakfast."
"No, nothing—I couldn't eat—it is Rosalind——"
Now he, too, went a shade paler.