“Well,” said the baroness, “is the war at an end? What, are we still silent? Let me try then what I can do. Edouard, lend me your hand.”
While Edouard hesitated, Josephine clasped her hands and mutely supplicated him to consent. Her sad face, and the thought of how often she had stood his friend, shook his resolution. He held out his hand, but slowly and reluctantly.
“There is my hand,” he groaned.
“And here is mine, mamma,” said Rose, smiling to please her mother.
Oh! the mixture of feeling, when her soft warm palm pressed his. How the delicious sense baffled and mystified the cold judgment.
Josephine raised her eyes thankfully to heaven.
While the young lovers yet thrilled at each other’s touch, yet could not look one another in the face, a clatter of horses’ feet was heard.
“That is Colonel Raynal,” said Josephine, with unnatural calmness. “I expected him to-day.”
The baroness was at the side window in a moment.
“It is he!—it is he!”