“My child,” he said, “will you make me the present of a rose?”
Nanette fainted.
IV.
When the flower-girl recovered she found herself in her own room, her family around her. But her eyes sought in vain the one face she most wished to see. Her mother and sisters told her with prodigious clamor and excitement, all talking at once at the tops of their voices, how she had fainted—“from the heat,” the gentleman said. “Yes, from the heat,” murmured Nanette softly, closing her eyes—how a great nobleman, the Prince de Courtenaye, had raised her, and how, without waiting for a carriage, and rejecting all aid, he had borne her in his arms to her house near by.
Nanette listened with closed eyes and a happy smile. All this was balm to her poor, sorely-tried heart. She even ventured to ask what had become of the kind gentleman. He had waited, they told her, to hear the doctor’s report giving assurance of her safety, and had then gone away, invoking for her their most zealous care. Presently the prince’s valet came to inquire after her health; but he himself did not come. Nanette was wounded, but she said nothing. Even pain in such a cause was too sacred a thing to be shared with another. Woman-like, she hugged her grief as though it were a treasure, and smiled, without knowing why, at the empty compliments of a crowd of petits-maîtres, who, after the fashion of the time, had rushed to pay her their condolences, and who ransacked Dorat for their vapid homage. Each took the smile to himself and redoubled his insipid gallantries. But Nanette was too much in love, if she had not been too clever, to heed them. So she contented herself and them by smiling.
At heart she was happy, in spite of the prince’s neglect. At least he would not marry; so much was secure. But the future: might he not have surprised her secret—she blushed as she thought it—and would he seek to abuse his power? No, she felt he was too noble for that, and, come what might, she would enjoy the present hour, the happiest she had known. So in vague, delicious hopes, and doubts not less delicious; in fluttering fears and half-formed, undefined resolves; in pain that seemed to be pleasure and pleasure whose sweetest element was pain—all the exquisite mélange of confused and dreamy emotions which take possession of a young and innocent heart so soon as it has fairly admitted to itself it loves—Nanette awaited her prince. She knew he would come; her heart told her so. And she was not deceived.
Early the next day he was announced. She essayed to rise as he entered, but sank back into her chair, half from weakness, half from agitation, murmuring incoherent excuses for her awkwardness. In an instant the prince was at her feet.
“Ah!” he cried, “I have found you out at last, my good cousin. But I am not come to return you your benefactions; only to beseech you to make it possible for me to keep them by adding to them a still more precious boon.”
“And that is—?”
“This fair, kind hand. Ah darling! you cannot refuse it me when you have already given me your heart.”