"There is some white lace for you. Can't you use it on some of your clothes? I don't know anything about such things: maybe it isn't pretty enough, but I thought perhaps it would do for that lilac silk you talked of."
I opened the package: it was exquisite, fit for a princess; and as I bent over it, I thought, how dead I must be, that it gave me no pleasure to know it was my own, for I had loved such baubles so, a year ago.
"What a mass of it!" I exclaimed, unfolding yard on yard.
"You must always wear lace," he said, throwing one end of it over my black dress around the shoulder. "I like you in it. I am tired of those stiff little linen collars."
The lace had given me a little compunction about not spending the evening with him: but as I had said so, I could not draw back; so I compromised the matter by going up to the library with him, to see that he was comfortable, before I came down to write my letter.
I brought the little student-lamp from my own room and lit it, and put it on the library-table, and brought him some fresh pens, and opened the inkstand for him, even pushed up the chair and put a little footstool by it. Though he was standing by the bookshelves, and seemed to be engrossed by them, I knew that he was watching me, filled with content and satisfaction.
"Do you remember where that box of cigars was put?" he said, turning to me as I paused. That was to keep me longer; for they were on the shelf, half a yard from where he stood.
I got the cigar-box and put it on the table.
"Now you will want some matches, and this stand is almost empty." So I took it away with me to my room, and came back with it filled.
"Is there anything else that I can do?" I said, pausing as I put it on the table.