She did not understand it; she only understood that he had rescued her from the conventual life, and that he loved her—surely he loved her, or he would not wish?——
Blanchette flew back into the room, accompanied by the maid Françoise.
‘Yseulte! Yseulte!’ she shrieked, waving a blue sash in one hand and with the other clasping to her a square parcel tied with silver cord. ‘Here is something he sends you: Françoise was bringing it. Open it quick, quick. Oh, what a happy creature you are, and you only stand and stare like the statues in the Luxembourg! Open it quick! It is sure to be something worth thousands and thousands of francs.’
‘Hush, Blanchette!’ said the girl, with a look of pain, as she took the packet and undid its covering. Within was the ivory casket; and within the casket was a necklace of great pearls.
A little note lay on them, which said merely:—
‘No one can dispossess you of the casket now. Receive what is within as a symbol of your own innocence and of my reverence for it.—Yours, with devotion, Othmar.’
On the other side of the paper was written more hastily:—‘Pardon me that I must leave immediately after dinner for Paris and shall not see you for a few days. I have explained to the Duchesse.’
Yseulte grew very pale. If the eyes of her little tormentor and of the woman Françoise had not been on her, she would have kissed his note and fallen on her knees and wept. As it was, she stood still in silence, reading the lines again and again, with sweet, warm tears in her eyes. It was Blanchette who took out the pearls and held them up in the lamplight, and appraised their value with the keenness of a jeweller and screamed in rapture over their size and colour.
‘They are the pigeon’s eggs!’ she cried, ‘ and four ropes of them; they must be worth an empire. They are as fine as mamma’s, and she has only three rows. I will marry into the finance myself. Oh, what a happy creature you are! Brown says it all came out of your going to gather flowers in his garden. Is that true? How clever it was of you! Who would ever have believed you were so clever, with your silent ways and your countryfied scruples. Let me see his note? You will not? What nonsense! You must put the pearls on. Let me fasten them. Four ropes! They are fit for a Court ball. What a corbeille he will send you!’