But it was too late to draw back; for in the mean, time she had received a second letter from Feodor, imparting the details of a plan for their joint flight, and she had approved of this plan.
Every thing was prepared, and all that she had to do was to remain in her room, and await the concerted signal with which Feodor was to summon her.
As soon as she heard this signal she was to leave the house with her maid, who had determined to accompany her, come out into the street, where Feodor would be in waiting with his carriage, and drive in the first place to the church. There a priest, heavily bribed, would meet them, and, with the blessing of the Church, justify Feodor in carrying his young wife out into the world, and Elise in "leaving father and home, and clinging only unto her husband."
Some hours were yet wanting to the appointed time. Elise, condemned to the idleness of waiting, experienced all the anxiety and pains which the expectation of the decisive moment usually carries with it.
With painful desire she thought of her father, and, although she repeated to herself that he would not miss her, that her absence would not be noticed, yet her excited imagination kept painting to her melancholy fancy, pictures of his astonishment, his anxiety, his painful search after her.
She seemed, for the first time, to remember that she was about to leave him, without having been reconciled to him; that she was to part from him forever, without having begged his forgiveness, without even having felt his fatherly kiss on her brow. At least she would write to him, at least send him one loving word of farewell. This determination she now carried out, and poured out all her love, her suffering, her suppressed tenderness, the reproaches of her conscience, in burning and eloquent words, on the paper which she offered to her father as the olive-branch of peace.
When she had written this letter, she folded it, and hid it carefully in her bosom, in order to carry it unnoticed to her father's room. He would not be there—for two days he had not been at home; she could, therefore, venture to go there without fear of meeting him. She felt as if she would not be able to bear his gaze—the full, bright look of his eye.
Carefully and softly, with the secret fear of meeting Bertram, whose sad, reproachful looks she dreaded even more, perhaps, than the eye of her father, she crept along the corridor, and finally reached the antechamber, breathing more freely, and glad to have met no one. Every thing here was quiet and silent; her father, therefore, had not yet returned, and she was quite safe from any surprise by him.
She now entered his private room, and crossing this, was in the act of opening the desk of his writing-table in order to deposit the letter therein, when she heard the door of the antechamber open. It was too late for flight, and she had only time to conceal the letter in her bosom, when the door of the room itself was opened.
It was her father who now entered the apartment. Speechless and motionless they both stood, confounded at this unexpected meeting, each waiting for a word of greeting of reconciliation from the other. But however earnestly their hearts yearned toward each other, their lips remained silent, and their looks avoided one another.