“Make me look as young and as well as possible, for I expect a visit from an old friend who has not seen me for years—he will be shocked at the change in me, I know.”
“Madame is more beautiful still than any young girl—only just a little too frail looking now from recent illness, but judicious dressing will disguise much of that,” cried the affectionate maid, applying herself with ardor to her task.
And a little later the result fairly justified her prediction.
The exquisite boudoir in white and gold harmonized well with the delicately beautiful woman whose pallor was softened by the faint rose hues of her gown overlaid with rich, creamy laces. Reclining on a pale-hued divan, with that fitful color coming and going in her cheek, with a streaming light of expectant joy in her wide, dark eyes, she was, indeed, a charming picture—one to thrill a man’s heart to the core.
“Will he come?” she asked herself in painful uncertainty, as her mind reverted rapidly over eighteen years to the bleak November day whereon they had quarreled and parted.
Oh, how they had loved and hated in a breath, both so young, so hasty, so inexperienced, that they scarcely knew what a harvest of woe they were sowing when they turned their backs on each other.
They had sown, and, alas, they had reaped—and the harvest was a plenteous crop of tears that tasted bitter on their lips.
I am tired to-night, and I miss you,
And long for you, love, through tears;
And it seems but to-day that I saw you go—