"Yes, yes! I recognize her now—my Star of the Valley, rightly named. Would she were mine!" he added, in a lower tone.
"Shall I present you?"
"Does she know I am here?"
"No; I didn't tell her a word about it."
"Then leave me. I will present myself."
"All right; that'll save me some trouble; and I hear somebody over there singing out for Mrs. Wiseman. So au revoir, and Cupid be with you!"
And, laughingly, Gipsy glided away, and Louis went up and stood before Celeste.
She looked up with a start, to find the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life standing before her, gazing upon her with such a look of intense admiration in his deep, dark eyes, that the blood rushed to her cheek, and the white lids dropped over the shrinking blue eyes. Another moment, and both her hands were clasped in his; while he cried, in a voice that was low, but full of passion:
"Celeste! Celeste! little sister!—do you not know me?"
"Louis!" broke from her lips, in a wild exclamation of joy.