She tried to smile. "I am delighted to find that there was no reason for it," she said. "Something prevented you; it was very foolish to think the worst at once. I will go and call my parents."
He held her back entreatingly. "You have been weeping, Mary!"
"It is nothing; I had a bad night, and the music just now agitated me."
He let her hand fall. She remained standing on the same spot, supporting herself against a chair. He took one turn up and down the room, and stood before her; he grasped her hand again, stammered out a word, and then pressed her passionately to his breast. She rested weeping blissfully and silently in his arms.
"We will go to my parents," said Mary, when she had had a little recovered the emotion of that first embrace. "Come!"
She took him gently by the hand. He longed to remain alone with her; it seemed to him as though she would be separated from him again when they came into the presence of others; yet he permitted her to lead him. They found her parents together in her mother's boudoir. As he entered he felt a longing to entreat his loved one to be silent on what had just passed between them, he felt incapable of talking calmly over it, or of meeting any one but herself in his blissful intoxication. It had already passed her lips. The mother, a stately, ceremonious woman, clasped him heartily in her arms; formal as she usually was, she could not hear the pleasant news without saying some heartfelt words of blessing, which, kindly as they were meant, still sounded foreign and strange to Theodore's state of feeling. Her father said nothing. He pressed his future son-in-law warmly by the hand, and kissed his daughter's forehead.
Theodore described the adventures of the previous evening. Mary leant her head on his breast, and when he told of the combat, threw her arm timidly around her lover, as if to assure herself that all was past, and that she really possessed him again in safety. Her mother made a sign to her, which, slight as it was, did not escape Theodore. She removed her arm, and sat near him without touching him. He felt pained; he felt, too, when after some hours he was obliged to leave, and kissed her again with his whole heart on the threshold, that she avoided him shily, and at first turned away her lips from his. He departed with a strange confusion of feeling--a weight upon his heart--and an obstinate deadened glow in every vein. He stood still for a moment before the door; the street was deserted, he pressed his feverish forehead against the cool stone pillars, and stretched forth his arms as if he would draw down a part of the heavens and press it to his breast, and then went somewhat more calmly on his way to the Tritone.
A passionate flush passed over Bianchi's haggard features, as he recognized Theodore's footsteps without. He raised himself and gazed eagerly and fully at him as he entered--taller and more manly than he had appeared to him the evening before. Theodore went to him and said, "You have rallied, Bianchi, and the doctor is satisfied. Keep quiet, I entreat you; you must let me walk up and down a little, my ideas are in a whirl, and my thoughts will not allow me to rest."
He told him not from whence he came, nor that within the last few hours he had bound his fate to a woman; but there lay a glory on him, from which Bianchi could not turn away his eyes. He had laid aside his hat, and thrown his cloak over one shoulder, his head sprang freely from the broad chest--the short curled hair was a little disordered--his forehead massive and noble; and thus, with an absent look, and his arms folded across his cloak, he seemed almost to have forgotten the purpose of his visit As he paced up and down, he struck his foot against the burning logs, and gazed at the fire. At last he turned, and said--
"Tell me about yourself, Bianchi!"