Dorothea’s eyes sparkled. Half eagerly, half timidly, she held out her hand.
Laughingly the young man placed the packet in her outstretched palm. She tore off the wrappings, and the next instant was gazing in breathless delight at a tiny brooch, which had a bright yellow carbuncle in the centre, set round with a ring of white petals, each of them represented by a pearl.
“It is a daisy! Oh, how beautiful!” she exclaimed. “Look, father; see what Herr Maurice has given me!”
And before Maurice could check the movement, she had darted out of the arbour to show her treasure to the forester.
Franz weighed it in his hand, and inspected it with the careful eye of a dealer.
“The Herr is very generous,” he remarked approvingly. “It must be worth at least a hundred florins.”
Auguste, who overheard him, could not forbear a smile. He knew that the little brooch had been specially manufactured by the most famous jeweller in Paris, and that it had taken weeks to bring together the perfectly shaped gems which formed the petals of the flower.
But Dorothea had been appalled by the magnitude of the sum named by her father. She came back slowly, and gazed at Maurice with a look of shy alarm.
“It is too good for me,” she said doubtfully. “You might have given it to one of the ladies up at the Castle.”
Maurice laughed.