If one must be roused out of a delicious sleep on a warm June day, surely violets, and such a note as accompanied these particular violets, were the least disagreeable means ever invented for accomplishing that end. Rosina’s frown for Ottillie changed into a smile for some one else, and she rose from among her pillows and submitted to her toilet with a good grace. Ottillie, who was French enough and experienced enough never to need to be told things, divined what the note must have contained the second time that she saw her mistress glance at the clock, and so accelerated her ordinary rate of movement that even the gown of lace which appeared to fasten nowhere, was fastened everywhere ere the town bells rang five.
A few minutes after, a garçon in the hotel livery brought up a card, and, Continental etiquette made it quite en règle for Monsieur von Ibn to be ushered into the dainty little salon which the Schweizerhof permitted Rosina to enjoy (for a consideration), and there muse in company with his own violets, while he waited and turned his cane over and over in his gloved hands.
Then Ottillie opened the portières beyond, and Rosina appeared between them, delightfully cool and fresh-looking, and flatteringly glad to see him.
“We seem like quite long friends, do we not?” he said, as he bent above her hand and kissed it lightly.
“Yes, certainly, I feel that I have the sensation of at any rate three weeks,” she answered; and then she sank luxuriously down in a great fauteuil, and was conscious of an all-pervading well-content that it should be too warm to go out, and that he should be there opposite her while she must remain within. She was curious about this man who was so out of the ordinary, and the path along which her curiosity led her seemed a most attractive one.
“Why do you say three weeks,” he asked; “why not three months or three years?”
“But in three years one learns to know another so well, and I do not feel—”
“Oh,” he interrupted, “it is better as it is; perhaps you may be like I am, and get weary always soon, and then have no longer any wish to see me.”
“Do you get tired of every one?”
He passed his hand across his eyes and sighed and smiled together.