Floy opened it with eager curiosity. It contained a gold chain and a tiny gold watch, both ornamented with pearls.
“Do you like it?” asked the Madame.
“Like it!” cried Floy; “I am charmed with it! I have always wanted a watch, but never had one. My dear adopted father had promised me one on my eighteenth birthday, but I was all alone in the world before that came,” she added, her voice sinking low and trembling with emotion.
CHAPTER XXXII.
ETHEL AT HOME.
“Pleasures mix’d with pains appear,
Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.”—Swift.
Madame Le Conte had missed her afternoon nap, and was much fatigued by the unusual exertions and excitement of the day.
It was quite early when she dismissed her niece for the night—so early that as Floy (or Ethel, as we should perhaps now call her) passed into her own apartments and stood for a moment before a window of her bedroom looking toward the west, she saw that the glow of the sunset had not yet faded from the sky.