Since the events which had first divided and then reunited us for ever, I had not yet been able to find in the sweet, silent, docile woman I had snatched back to my heart, the wilful Ottilie of old. Her spirits seemed to have been sobered; her gaiety, her petulance, to have been lost in the still current of the almost fearful happiness bought at the price of blood; and at times, in my inmost heart, I had mourned for my lost sprite. But now, as we stood together, she all illumined with the rosy radiance from the fire, she looked of a sudden from the picture on the wall to me, and I saw a spark of the old mockery leap into her eyes.
“And so, sir,” she said, “the forward person who married you against your will is mistress here again, after all!... but you will always remember, I trust, that it is the privilege of a princess to choose her partner.” And then she added, coming a step nearer me: “To-morrow we must fill in the pedigree again—what say you, M. Jean Nigaud de la Faridondaine?”
Now, as she spoke, her lips arched into the well-remembered smile, and beside it danced the dimple. And I know not what came upon me, for there are joys so subtle that they unman even as sorrows, but I fell at her feet with tears.
THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.
By JAMES LANE ALLEN,
Author of “A Summer in Arcady,” “A Kentucky Cardinal,” etc.
12mo. Cloth. $1.50.