"What tiresome thoughts can I have, Earle, except that I regret youth and pleasure are not immortal? I can have no other. Say something loving to me, Earle."
He bent over her and whispered words that brought a sweet, bright blush to her face; then she stood up.
"Now give me my flowers, Earle."
He did so, shaking the little golden bells.
"Do I look bright and brilliant again?" she asked—"like the belle of the ball?"
"Yes, bright as the morning star."
"Now for Prince Poermal and some sugared German compliments," she said.
And they returned to the ball-room.
The prince, all smiles, all gallantry, all devotion, came up to claim her hand. Earle watched her as she danced with him; she was all smiles, all brightness, all light. She talked gayly, she laughed, and the prince appeared to be charmed with her.
Earle wondered more and more. Was it possible this brilliant, beautiful girl was the one he had seen so short a time before, white, cold, and silent, as though some terrible trouble lay over her. He saw what universal admiration she excited; how many admiring glances followed her; he saw that in that brilliant assembly there was no one to compare with her, and he wondered at his own good fortune in winning so peerless a creature. Yet he felt that there was something strange about her, something that he could not understand. Her spirits were strangely unequal; one minute she was all fire, animation, and excitement, the next dull and absent. He tried to account for it all by saying to himself the life was new to her—new and very strange—and it was only natural that she should feel strange in it.