If she should hear from the wanderer she would send him to Mr. Hereward to divulge his secret, now no longer needing to be kept, to justify her conduct, and leave it to her husband to seek her if it should please him to do so.
Or—if she should hear nothing from the wanderer up to the time of Madame Von Bruyin’s marriage, she would, on that occasion, only wait until the bride and bridegroom should have left Paris, and then she would run down to Havre by rail and take the first homeward bound steamer to New York.
Sometimes she wondered why the baroness never seemed to take any interest or to care to ask any questions in regard to her young companion’s future plans. But she supposed that Madame Von Bruyin was too much absorbed in her own interesting prospects to think of anybody else’s.
In this supposition, however, Lilith did her friend but scant justice.
The baroness—in her secret heart—had quite settled the question of her companion’s future, and had no suspicion that Lilith would raise any objection to her plan or that it was even necessary at present to allude to it.
The day of explanation soon came, however.
It was Sunday. They could not go out shopping. They attended church in the forenoon, and, after an early dinner, lounged about in Madame Von Bruyin’s boudoir. Letters had been left for the baroness on the previous day, but she had returned from her shopping too tired to examine any of them except those addressed in the handwriting of the prince, her betrothed, which she had read with avidity; the others she had pushed aside until a more convenient season.
Now, on this Sabbath afternoon, her languid eyes fell upon the little heap of letters still lying upon her writing-table.
“Nothing more interesting than circulars from tradespeople, I fancy,” she said, as she lazily picked them up and passed them through her fingers as if they had been a pack of playing cards.
“Ah! but here is one for you, petite, directed to my care! I am sorry I did not find it yesterday, when I should have given it to you. It bears the New York postmark, and is perhaps from the good Aunt Sophie, who is, I believe, your only correspondent in the world. Is it not so?” said the baroness, as she held the letter out to Lilith, who came eagerly forward to claim it.