“I never fail where I mean to succeed,” answered Dr. Guy, with equal emphasis.  “Sooner or later, I triumph!  I shall triumph now!  ’All things are possible to him who knows how to wait.’  I have waited, and this night gives me my reward.”

The house door closed after the young man.  Mrs. Walraven peeped into the drawing-room, never seeing the slender figure amid the voluminous golden damask, and then reascended the stairs.  Mollie was again in silence and solitude.

“Now, what are those two up to, I should like to know?” soliloquized the young lady.  “Some piece of atrocious mischief, I’ll be bound!  He looks like the Miltonic Lucifer sometimes, that man, only not one half so good-looking; but there is a snakish, treacherous, cold-blooded glare in his greenish-black eyes that makes me think of the arch-tempter; and some people have the bad taste to call him handsome.”

The twilight had ended in darkness by this time.  Mollie put her hand to her belt to find her watch, but it was not there.

“I have left it on my dressing-table,” she thought, moving away.  “I will have a cup of tea in my room this evening, and let guardy and Madame Blanche dine together.  I wish it were time to start.  I abominably hate waiting.”

Mollie found her watch on the table, and was rather surprised to see it past eight.

“I had no idea it was so late,” she said to herself.  “I shall leave here at half past nine.  There is nothing like keeping tryst in season.”

She rang for Lucy, ordered a little supper in her room, and then dismissed the maid.

“I shan’t want you again to-night, Lucy,” she said.  “You can go out, if you like, and see your mother.”

Lucy tripped away, right well pleased, and Mollie dawdled the time over her supper and a book.

Half past nine came very soon.

“Time to get ready,” thought Mollie, starting up.  “Dear, dear! it’s highly romantic and highly sensational, this nocturnal appointment with a masked man, and that man one’s mysterious husband.  I can’t say much for the place; there’s precious little romance around the Maison Dorée.  Does it still rain, I wonder?”

She opened the blind and looked out.  Yes, it still rained; it still blew in long, shuddering gusts; the low-lying sky was inky black; athwart the darkness flashed the murky street lamps.

Mollie dropped the curtain, with a little shiver.

“’The night is cold, and dark, and dreary,
It rains, and the wind is never weary.’

It’s a horrible night to be abroad, but I’ll keep my word, if I drown for it!”

She hunted up the long water-proof mantle she had worn the night of her abduction, drew the hood far over her head and face, wrapped it around her, opened the window, and resolutely stepped out on the piazza.

She paused an instant—­a blinding rush of wind and rain almost took her off her feet; the next, the brave little heroine was flitting along the slippery piazza, down the stairs, out of the wicket gate and into the black, shining street.