How happy she was that day! How very, very happy!
Again and again, through the power of memory and imagination, in the silence and solitude of night, she recalled and lived over that day—and one or two other days embalmed in her mind.
All these few happy days belonged to the month of February—the most sunshiny month of her year, midwinter though it might have been to everybody else.
During all the remainder of the season in Paris it required all Lilith’s tact to avoid receiving a direct proposal of marriage from one or another of her fortune-hunting adorers.
At length she almost offended Madame Von Bruyin by declining to go into company at all.
“They take me for ‘a widow indeed,’ madame, and it becomes very embarrassing,” she pleaded.
“Well, but, petite, we cannot explain; so what is to be done?” inquired the baroness, laughing at the absurdity of Lilith’s dilemma.
“I do not know, unless I avoid society. I might stay home when you go out, and keep my room when you have company here,” replied the girl.
“But I cannot consent to any such isolation on your part. It would not be good for your health of mind or body. Come, my dear, cheer up! Endure the homage of the world for a few days longer—only for a few days, petite, and then it will be over. Paris will be empty, and we ourselves will be inhaling the mountain air of Switzerland,” laughed the lady.
And Lilith, having no alternative, endured the tortures of her false position until the fashionable world had fled from town.