"I told you it was safe," said Mr. Ingelow. "You are a woman in a thousand, Sarah, to manage so cleverly! Now, then, for Miss Dane! Upstairs, is it? Do you go in first, Sarah; but don't tell her I'm coming. I want the pleasure of surprising her myself."
Sarah smiled, and unlocked Mollie's door. The girl was sitting with an anxious, listening, expectant face. She rose up and turned around at the opening of the door.
"Is it you, nurse? Oh, I have been so uneasy! What noise was—"
She never finished the sentence—it died out in an inarticulate cry of joy. For Hugh Ingelow, his disguise torn off, stood in the door-way, smiling and serene as the god of safety himself.
Mollie Dane was a creature of impulse—she never stopped to think. One faint; suppressed cry, one bound forward, and she was in the young man's arms.
"Hugh! Hugh! Hugh!" she cried, hysterically, clinging to him, "save me! save me!"
It was the first time she had ever called him other than Mr. Ingelow. The young man's arms closed around her as if they never would open again.
"My darling, I have come to save you!"
It had all passed in five seconds, but that short interval was long enough for Mollie's womanly instincts to take the alarm. She disengaged herself, reddening violently. What would he think of her? and Mrs. Sharpe there, too!
"They have driven me nearly out of my senses!" she said, with a sort of choking sob. "I don't know what I am doing half the time, and I was so glad to see a friend's familiar face, Mr. Ingelow."