“Then, the romances he told us about your charity, your virtues, and—your love of liberty were false?” said Helen, with a keen glance, for these tales had done much to interest her in the unknown baron.
Sudden color rose to his forehead, and for the first time his eyes fell before hers,—not in shame, but with a modest man’s annoyance at hearing himself praised.
“Sidney is enthusiastic in his friendship, and speaks too well for me. The facts are true, but he doubtless glorified the simplest by his way of telling it. Will you forgive my follies, and believe me when I promise to play and duel no more?”
“Yes.”
She yielded her hand now, and her eyes were full of happiness, yet she added, wistfully,—
“And the betrothed, your cousin, Minna,—is she, in truth, not dear to you?”
“Very dear, but less so than another; for I could not learn of her in years what I learned in a day when I met you. Helen, this was begun in jest,—it ends in solemn earnest, for I love my liberty, and I have lost it, utterly and forever. Yet I am glad; look in my face and tell me you believe it.”
He spoke now as seriously as fervently, and with no shadow on her own, Helen brushed back the blond hair and looked into her lover’s face. Truth, tenderness, power, and candor were written there in characters that could not lie; and with her heart upon her lips, she answered, as he drew her close,—
“I do believe, do love you, Sigismund!”
Meanwhile another scene was passing in the garden. Sidney, presuming upon his cousinship, took possession of Amy, bidding her “strike but hear him.” Of course she listened with the usual accompaniment of tears and smiles, reproaches and exclamations, varied by cruel exultations and coquettish commands to go away and never dare approach her again.