"I shall remain here," said Geraldine; "my shoes are very thin; besides I wish to have another look at the pictures."
Edouard demurred, but the young girl bade him go at once; and, like an obedient lover, he took the mamma's arm, and went into the garden.
The instant all were gone Geraldine rose from her chair and tottered across the room. She was pale, and looked cautiously round, as if about to do some guilty act. Presently she stood before a curtain which had been hastily drawn before a kind of niche in the wall, or rather before a portion of the room. But it had been done very quickly, and through two apartures you could see stained glass, and on a small table something under a glass-case. Geraldine could not restrain herself. She pulled away the curtain, and there, under a large glass on a velvet cushion, lay the rose which had been cut from her head-dress on the night she had accepted the hand of her cousin. Near it was a pencil-sketch of herself.
"My God!" she cried, passionately, "he did love me then: what a fool I have been! Wicked pride, to what will you lead me?"
"My Geraldine," exclaimed Alfred, who rose from a chair where he had been seated in a dark corner, "pardon me! But I could not resist the temptation. To see, to hear you once more, for the last time, was my only wish. Do you forgive me?"
"Do you forgive me?" said Geraldine, hanging down her head, and speaking in a low, soft, sweet voice, that had never been hers before.
"My God!—what?" exclaimed Alfred, who, pale and trembling, stood by her side.
"You will not force me to say, Alfred," she continued in a beseeching tone.
"Do I understand aright? O forgive me, Geraldine, if I say too much; but is it possible that you do not hate me?"
"Hate you, Alfred! How can I hate one so generous and good? If you think me not bold to say it, I will say I love you. After behaving as I did, that confession will be my punishment."