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332 'My business is pressing. I must see Mr. Stanly.'

'I am sorry, sir, but orders are orders: I am his particular servant here—the one that sees his silver every holyday. I can't disobey him. May I shut the door, sir? for as it is, I cannot admit you.'

'The drawing-rooms are on the second floor, are they not?' said Pierre quietly.

'Yes,' said the black, pausing in surprise, and holding the door.

'Yonder are the stairs, I think?'

'That way, sir; but this is yours'; and the now suspicious black was just on the point of closing the portal violently upon him, when Pierre thrust him suddenly aside, and springing up the long stairs, found himself facing an open door, from whence proceeded a burst of combined brilliancy and melody, doubly confusing to one just emerged from the street. But bewildered and all demented as he momentarily felt, he instantly stalked in, and confounded the amazed company with his unremoved slouched hat, pale cheek, and whole dusty, travel-stained, and ferocious aspect.

'Mr. Stanly! where is Mr. Stanly?' he cried, advancing straight through a startled quadrille, while all the music suddenly hushed, and every eye was fixed in vague affright upon him.

'Mr. Stanly! Mr. Stanly!' cried several bladish voices, toward the further end of the further drawing-room, into which the first one widely opened; 'here is a most peculiar fellow after you; who the devil is he?'

'I think I see him,' replied a singularly cool, deliberate, and rather drawling voice, yet a very silvery one, and at bottom perhaps a very resolute one; 'I think I see him; stand aside, my good fellow, will you; ladies, remove, remove, from between me and yonder hat.'

The polite compliance of the company thus addressed,