The Noble Rogue

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

The worthy tailor was more agitated than he cared to own. He felt fussy and could not manage to sit still. It still lacked nearly an hour to midday, and he was ready and over-ready to receive milor. He bustled maman out of the room, then ran back to have a final look at Rose Marie.

"Keep calm, my treasure," he said agitatedly, "par Dieu! There's no need for excitement. Thou art not the first and only bride who has ever been claimed by an unknown husband. 'Tis milor, no doubt, who feels flustered. He has been in the wrong and comes to make amends. Not a very pleasant position for a proud English lord, eh, my pigeon? But thou art within thy rights, and wilt receive him with becoming dignity."

With gentle, insinuating gestures Rose Marie contrived to lead her father out of the room, and finally to close the door behind him.

Time was hurrying on and she did so want to be alone and to think. This was the end of the old life, the beginning of the new: the new with all its hopes, its fears, its mysteries. She had put it very pertinently to her mother when she said that nothing, nothing would ever be quite the same again.

Now that dear Papa Legros' heavy footsteps had died down the steep staircase, Rose Marie could sit by the open window and just think of it all, for the last time, before these mysteries of the new life were revealed to her.

I think that what struck her as most curious in the future was the idea that she would never be quite alone again. For she had—despite the loving care of adoring parents—been very much alone. We must remember that there is never complete harmony between the young and the old. The former live for the future, the latter for the present, oft times only for the past. Papa and Maman Legros found their joy in seeing Rose Marie grow up and live, like some beautiful flower, carefully tended, guarded against the tearing winds of life, nourished, fed and caressed. But Rose Marie thought she cherished her parents, dreamed of the time when she would be a woman with another home, with other affections, with other kindred. Therefore she was lonely even in the midst of her happy home. There was a great deal that Rose Marie did not understand in life, but there was an infinity which maman would never comprehend.

Would this newcomer, this stranger understand better than maman, she wondered. Would he know what ailed her when in the very midst of joy she suddenly felt inclined to cry? Would he then know just the right word to say, the right word to soothe her, and to fit in with her mood?

There were other thoughts that flew through Rose Marie's mind during this, the last lonely hour of her girlhood, but these she would not allow to linger in her mind, for they caused her cheeks to blush, and her heart to beat with sudden, nameless fear. She had seen the girls and boys of Paris wandering arm in arm in the woods of Fontainebleau, she had seen a fair head leaning against a dark head, and lips meeting lips in a furtive kiss, and now in her innocent heart she wondered what it felt like thus to be kissed.

Hush!—sh!—sh!—No, no! Maman was not there to see the quick blush which at the thought rose to the girlish cheek. Maman would not understand. She would say gaily: "Pardi my cabbage! but thy husband shall kiss thee of a truth and right lustily on thy fresh cheeks or thy budding mouth. A good, round, sounding kiss an he loves thee, which of course he will!" And the girls, too, in the woods at Fontainebleau, they usually laughed after that furtive kiss snatched behind some tree, when they thought that no one was looking.

But Rose Marie did not think that she would laugh when my lord kissed her. It seemed to her so strange that girls should make light of such wondrous moments in their lives. Rose Marie thought that when my lord kissed her she would probably cry, not in grief, oh, no! but with a strange exultant joy because of his love for her.