The room which she entered was richly furnished, but the upright damask chairs, the small tables of dark mahogany, and two or three cushions that filled the window recesses, were lightly clouded with dust, such as accumulates even in a closed room when long unoccupied. There was also a grand piano in the apartment, with other musical instruments, all richly inlaid, but with their polish dimmed from a like cause.
The lady seemed perfectly careless of all this disarray; she flung herself on a high-backed damask sofa, and one instant buried her flushed features in the pillows—the next, she would lift her head, hold her breath and listen if among the gush of bird-songs and the hum of insects she could hear the one sound that her heart was panting for. Then she would start up, and taking a tiny watch from her bosom snatch an impatient glance at the hands and thrust it back to its tremulous resting-place again. Alas for thee, Florence Hurst! All this emotion, this tremor of soul and body, this quick leaping of the blood in thy young heart and thrilling of thy delicate nerves, in answer to a thought, what does it all betoken? Love, love such as few women ever experienced, such as no woman ever felt without keen misery, and happiness oh how supreme! Happiness that crowds a heaven of love into one exquisite moment, whose memory never departs, but like the perfume that hangs around a broken rose, lingers with existence forever and ever.
Florence loved passionately, wildly. Else why was she there in the solitude of that lone dwelling? Her father's household was in the city—no human being was in the old mansion to greet her coming, and yet Florence was there—alone and waiting!
It was beyond the time! You could see that by the hot flush upon her cheek, by the sparkle of her eyes—those eyes so full of pride, passion and tenderness, over which the quick tears came flashing as she wove her fingers together, while broken murmurs dropped from her lips.
"Does he trifle with me—has he dared—"
How suddenly her attitude of haughty grief was changed! what a burst of tender joy broke over those lovely features! How eagerly she dashed aside the proud tears and sat down quivering like a leaf, and yet striving—oh how beautiful was the strife!—to appear less impatient than she was.
Yes, it was a footstep light and rapid, coming along the gravel-walk. It was on the stoop—in the room—and before her stood a young man, elegant, nay almost superb in his type of manliness, and endowed with that indescribable air of fashion which is more pleasing than beauty, and yet as difficult to describe as the perfume of a flower or the misty descent of dews in the night.
The young girl up to this moment had been in a tumult of expectation, but now the color faded from her cheek, and the breath as it rose trembling from her bosom seemed to oppress her. It was but for a moment. Scarcely had his hand closed upon hers when her heart was free from the shadow that had fallen upon it, and a sweet joy possessed her wholly. She allowed his arm to circle her waist unresisted, and when he laid a hand caressingly on one cheek and drew the other to his bosom, that cheek was glowing like a rose in the sunshine.
For some moments they sat together in profound silence, she trembling with excess of happiness, he gazing upon her with a sort of sidelong and singular expression of the eye, that had something calculating and subtle in it, but which changed entirely when she drew back her head and lifted the snowy lids that had closed softly over her eyes the moment she felt the beating of his heart.
"And so you have come at last?" she said very softly, and drawing back with a blush, as if the fond attitude she had fallen into were something to which she had hitherto been unused. "Are you alone? I thought—"