“Thanks, dear papa,” answers the young lady. Then suddenly she says: “But I must go.”
“Why?”
“To make toilet for my coming husband.”
“Humph!”
“I shall be dressed as a bride.”
“You love this man so very much, my Hermoine?” There is a sob in the father’s voice.
“With my whole heart,” she answers; then suddenly cries: “Perhaps I shall have another surprise for you to-night, if you’ll grant it, but then papa you grant me everything!—you dear old papa who will make your daughter’s happiness so very great this night.”
With this she puts tender kiss upon his brow and runs away, leaving her father wondering to himself whether he has guessed right or not.
But all the same there are tears in his eyes that never shed them; and once or twice when he hears his daughter’s voice from neighboring apartment giving orders as to her toilet and other preparations for the reception of the man she loves, his face has a horrified expression on it. Then a minute after a gleam comes into the serpent’s eyes, and his long hands clench themselves together as if seizing some enemy long sought for and difficult to grasp, but very pleasant to his grip and talons, and he mutters to himself: “If it is he who stole my gold for that Jezebel Elizabeth; if it is he by whose advice the [[249]]Gueux were ordered out of England with no food, no water, but only cannon balls and powder to stir up rebellion in this land, I’d sooner have him than even William the Silent!”