Elizabeth, wounded, attempted to withdraw her hand from his arm.
"Oh, no—you do not escape me so easily!" he cried, retaining it. "You must either deny or acknowledge it. You looked indifferent lately, when I threw away my cousin's tender token, the rose."
"Should I have flown after it?"
"Certainly, if you had been true."
Elizabeth knew now why he had entered this lonely path with her,—she was to confess her feelings towards Hollfeld. She was confirmed in her former suspicions,—Herr von Walde was evidently most anxious lest she should prize his cousin's homage too highly and perhaps imagine that he could forget her social position. The moment had come when she could declare her sentiments. By a hasty movement she released her hand from his arm, and stepped a little aside.
"I grant you," she said, "that if my face that day expressed indifference, it was not in harmony with my thoughts."
"I thought so!" he cried, but there was no triumph in the exclamation.
"I was in fact indignant."
"At my interference?"
"At the unauthorized levity of Herr von Hollfeld."