She moved toward the door as she concluded, for the man's forbidding and churlish presence chilled her like an icy wind.
"Ah! yes—yes, thank you, young woman. I'm much obliged to you, I am sure," stammered the squire as he glanced irresolutely from his wallet to her, then back again at the crisp bills within it. "I—I suppose I ought to pay you something for your trouble."
Mollie flushed a vivid crimson at the reluctant suggestion, and drew herself up with involuntary hauteur.
"Indeed no, sir," she coldly responded. "I assure you you are very welcome to what I have done, and I will not detain you longer. Good evening, Mr. Talford," and she bowed herself out with a grace that could not wholly veil the vein of mockery and contempt that underlay her words, and vanished from his sight, but leaving him with a sense of shame and meanness such as he had seldom experienced in life.
"Talford! Talford! Where have I heard that name? It rings in the chambers of my memory with a strangely familiar sound, and it almost seems as if I have seen that face before," Mollie mused, with a look of perplexity on her face, as she drove back in the fast gathering twilight toward home; but she failed to place either face or name, and soon forgot all about them for the time.
CHAPTER XV.
PHILIP'S MAD PLEA.
Five hours later Mollie, clad in a trailing robe of pale-yellow satin, and looking a veritable princess, with her shining hair coiled high upon her shapely head and encircled with a tiara of diamonds, stood in the drawing-room of the residence of the English ambassador making her obeisance to that distinguished gentleman and his courtly wife.
She was accompanied by her father, who was now the picture of health, whose every movement was replete with vigor and almost youthful energy; for, as he claimed, after fifty years of aimless groping he was just beginning to learn how to live. Clifford was also with them, but following a step or two in the rear, and, with his fine face and manly bearing, there was not a handsomer man in the room. Their salutations over, they moved aside to make way for others, when a beautiful girl, all in white, except that she wore a great bunch of scarlet poppies in her belt, stepped forward and extended a faultlessly gloved hand to Clifford.
"I am sure that Mr. Faxon is not one to forget his old friends," she smilingly observed, while her face glowed with undisguised pleasure at the meeting.