Rose clasped her hands supplicatingly.
"Oh, Ogden! Don't tell papa! Pray, don't tell papa!"
"I am very sorry, Miss Rose, but it would be as much as my place is worth. I must!"
He stood aside to let her pass. Rose, with all her flightiness, was too proud to plead with a servant, and walked out in silence.
Not an instant too soon. As she opened her door, some one came upstairs; some one who was tall, and slight; and muffled in a long cloak.
He passed through the baize door, before she had time to see his face, closed it after him, and was gone.
Rose locked her door, afraid of she know not what; and sat down on the bedside to think. Who was this Mr. Richards who passed for an invalid, and who was no invalid? Why was he shut up here, where no one could see him, and why was all this mystery? Rose thought of "Jane Eyre" and Mr. Rochester's wife, but Mr. Richards could not be mad or they never would trust him out alone at night. What, too, would her father say to her to-morrow? She quailed a little at the thought; she had never seen her indulgent father out of temper in her life. He took the most disagreeable contre-temps with imperturbable good-humour, but how would he take this?
"I should not like to offend papa," thought Rose, uneasily. "He is very good to me, and does everything I ask him. I do hope he won't be angry. I almost wish I had not gone!"
There was no sleep for her that night. When morning came, she was almost afraid to go down to breakfast and face her father; but when the bell rang, and she did descend, her father was not there.
Ogden came in with his master's excuses—Captain Danton was very busy, and would breakfast in his study. The news took away Rose's morning appetite; she sat crumbling her roll on her plate, and feeling that Ogden had told him, and that that was the cause of his non-appearance.