The maid lights the candles.
"Ah!" she exclaims in dismay when she sees Stella's sad, swollen face, "Mademoiselle is in distress! Good heavens! what has happened? Has Mademoiselle had bad news?--some one dead whom she loves?"
Any German maid at sight of the girl's disconsolate face would have suspected some love-complication; the French servant would never think of anything of the kind in connection with a respectable young lady.
"No, Justine, but I have lost a porte-bonheur,--a porte-bonheur that my father gave me a little while before he died,--and it is sure to mean some misfortune. I know something dreadful will happen to me at the ball. I would rather stay at home. But there would be no use in that: my fate will find me wherever I am: it is impossible to hide from it."
"Ah," sighs Justine, "I am so sorry for Mademoiselle! But Mademoiselle must not take the matter so to heart: the porte-bonheur will be found; nothing is lost in Paris. We will apply to the police-superintendent, and the porte-bonheur will be found. Ah, Mademoiselle would not believe how many lost articles I have had brought back to me! Will not Mademoiselle take a look at the bouquets?" And the Parisian maid whips off the cotton wool and silver-paper that have enveloped the flowers. "Dieu! que c'est beau!" cries Justine, her brown, good-humoured face beaming with delight beneath the frill of her white cap. "Two cards came with the flowers; there----"
Stella grasps the cards. The bouquet of gardenias and fantastic orchids comes from Zino; the other, of half-opened, softly-blushing Malmaison roses and snowdrops, is Edgar's gift.
In their arch-loveliness, carelessly tied together, the flowers look as if they had come together in the cold winter, to whisper of the delights of spring and summer,--of the time when earth and sunshine, now parted by a bitter feud, shall meet again with warm, loving kisses of reconciliation.
Zino's orchids and gardenias lie neglected on the cold gray marble top of a corner table; with a dreamy smile, in the midst of her tears, Stella buries her face among the roses, which remind her of Erlach Court.
"Mademoiselle will find her porte-bonheur again; I am sure of it; I have a presentiment," Justine says, soothingly. "But now Mademoiselle must begin to make herself beautiful. Madame has given me express permission to help her."