He recalled the pleased yet conscious, girlish superiority with which she had received the adulation of her friends; his memory of her was broad enough now even to identify Milly, as it repeopled the vacant and silent room.
An hour later he was making his way to Colonel Pendleton's lodgings, and half expecting to find the St.Charles Hotel itself transformed by the eager spirit of improvement.

But it was still there in all its barbaric and provincial incongruity.

Public opinion had evidently recognized that nothing save the absolute razing of its warped and flimsy walls could effect a change, and waited for it to collapse suddenly like the house of cards it resembled.

Paul wondered for a moment if it were not ominous of its lodgers' hopeless inability to accept changed conditions, and it was with a feeling of doubt that he even now ascended the creaking staircase.

But it was instantly dissipated on the threshold of the colonel's sitting-room by the appearance of George and his reception of his master's guest.
The grizzled negro was arrayed in a surprisingly new suit of blue cloth with a portentous white waistcoat and an enormous crumpled white cravat, that gave him the appearance of suffering from a glandular swelling.