Lilly was silent, ashamed of being so stupid that she was not in the least able to follow him. It all sounded to her like double Dutch.
"Well, will you ... or not?"
"Will I what?" stammered Lilly.
"Good God! All this time I have been asking you to be my wife," the colonel replied.
CHAPTER XII
This was the moment in which Lilly's hopes and wondering astonishment reached their climax. Could it be Lilly Czepanek to whom all this was happening, or had she changed places with someone else--some heroine who only lived inside those old brown-covered books, and who would cease to exist directly the last page was turned? He did not urge her to consent at once. As she sank back in a helpless heap, incapable of speaking, he took her hands tenderly in his, and with the smile of a beneficent deity, reasoned with her more gently than she could have believed possible. She might think it over, he said, for three days, or he would even allow her ten. So long he could be patient, but she must promise in the meantime to say nothing about it to anyone.
She gladly acceded, still too terribly ashamed to look him in the face.
Then she ran home and cried and cried without knowing why she cried, whether for joy or for grief. She was still sobbing when towards four in the morning the sisters, who had relaxed their strict etiquette in honour of the New Year, crept in and passed through the room.
When she got up in the morning she was sure that he could not have been in earnest, and that before the day was over he would send to say that he had changed his mind. She wouldn't care much if he did. Indeed, she would breathe more freely and thank God to be relieved from a haunting burden of perplexities.
At ten o'clock there was a ring, and a basket of roses was handed in. The size and costliness of the blooms filled the sisters with astounded disapproval. They knew the price of roses in winter, and calculated that these had cost a sum greatly exceeding Lilly's wages for a month.