"Wake her, and find out."
"Wake her?"
"Didn't I tell you that many of us are asleep, and that few of us awake easily? Didn't I tell you that nobody likes to be awakened from the warm comfort and idle security of emotionless slumber?—that it is the instinct of many of us to resist—just as I hear my maid speak to me in the morning and then turn over for another forty winks, hating her!"
They both laughed.
"My maid has instructions to persist until I respond," said Molly. "Those are my instructions to you, also."
"Suppose, after all, I were knocking at the door of an empty room?"
"You must take your chances of course."
There was a noise of horses on the gravel: Langly cantered up on a handsome hunter followed by a mounted groom leading Strelsa's mare.
Sprowl dismounted and came up to pay his respects to Molly, scarcely troubling himself to recognise Quarren's presence, and turning his back to him immediately, although Molly twice attempted to include him in the conversation.
Strelsa in the library, pulling on her gloves, was silent witness to a pantomime unmistakable; but her pretty lips merely pressed each other tighter, and she sauntered out, crop under one arm, with a careless greeting to Langly.