The door opened and he was at once conducted to Madeleine's boudoir.
Madeleine was still sitting before the little table where Gaston de Bois had left her. The sketch she had commenced lay before her, and the pencil beside it; but though she had not moved from her seat, the drawing had not received an additional touch.
As Maurice entered she rose, and advanced toward him, stretching out both her hands. Closely clasping those extended hands, he gazed upon her with an expression of rapture. For a moment, the large, clear windows of her soul opened as naturally and frankly as ever; but his look was so full of unutterable tenderness that over her betraying eyes the lids dropped suddenly, and her face crimsoned, it might be with happiness which she felt bound to conceal.
Madeleine was the first to speak; but the only words she murmured were, "Maurice!—my dear cousin!"
How her accents thrilled him! How they brought back the time when that voice, which made all the music of his existence, was suddenly hushed, and awful silence took its place, leaving the memory of departed tones ever sounding in his aching, longing ears!
"Madeleine!—have I found you at last? Oh, how long we have been lost to each other!"
"You have never been lost to me," answered Madeleine involuntarily; but the words were hardly spoken when she repented them.
"I know it; M. de Bois kept you informed of my movements. But, ah, Madeleine, how could you be aware of my anguish, and so cruelly refuse a sign by which I might learn that you were near me?"
"I had no alternative. I could not have carried out the project I had formed, and which"—Madeleine paused, and looked around her somewhat proudly, then added, "and which you now see crowned with success, if I had run the risk of your tracing me. You would have opposed my undertaking,—do you not feel that you would? Answer that question, before you reproach me."
"Yes, you are right, Madeleine; I fear I should have opposed your enterprise. And yet, believe me, I honor it,—I honor you all the more on account of that very undertaking. Thank Heaven, I have lived long enough in this land, where men (and women too) have sufficient courage to use their lives, and senseless idlers are the exceptions; to realize that man's work and woman's work are alike glorious; that labor is dignified by the hand that toils; and that you, Madeleine, the daughter of a duke,—you, the duchess-mantua-maker, have reached a higher altitude through that very labor than your birth could ever command."