Gaston had gone too far for concealment. "He spoke of Mademoiselle Melanie, the mantua-maker; but I warrant I have silenced him!"
"Madeleine is very happy in the possession of such a true friend as you are! one upon whom she can always lean,—always depend,—one who can never fail her! Yes, she is very, very happy! When I heard you defending her before my aunt, I said to myself, 'Oh that I had such a friend!'"
Would not Gaston de Bois have been the dullest of mortals if those words had failed to infuse a sudden courage into his heart?
He replied with impetuous ardor, "Would—would that you could be induced to accept the same friend as your own! Would that he might dare to hope that some day, however distant, you would grant him a nearer, dearer title! Would that he might believe such a joy possible!"
Bertha spoke no word, made no movement, but sat with her eyes bent on the ground. Her manner emboldened Gaston to seize her hand; she did not withdraw it from his clasp; then he comprehended his joy, and poured out the history of his long-concealed passion with a tender eloquence of which he never imagined himself capable.
If, when he awoke that morning from a dream in which Bertha's lovely countenance was vividly pictured, some prophetic voice had whispered that ere the sun went down he would have uttered such language, and she have listened to it, he would not have believed the verification of that delightful prediction within the bounds of possibility. Yet, when the happy pair left the capital grounds to return to the hotel, Gaston walked by the side of his betrothed bride.
It is true that the wealthy heiress had lured on her self-distrusting lover to make a declaration which he had not contemplated; but who will charge her with unmaidenly conduct? The most modest of women are daily doing, unaware, what Bertha did somewhat more consciously. Shakespeare, who read the hearts of women with the penetrating eyes of a seer, and who never painted a heroine who was not the type of a class, pictured no rare or imaginary order of being in his beauteous Desdemona,—
"A maiden never bold,
Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion
Blushed at herself,"—
who was yet "half the wooer." And there is no lack of men who can testify (in spite of the feminine denial which we anticipate) that they owe their happiness (or misery) to some gentle, timid girl who was nevertheless "half the wooer."