"Ha, ha, ha! he kissed her in the wood, Fifine, give Poll his cracker, polly wants a cracker." The girl's face was dyed with scarlet—and the young man's eyes looked daggers at the mischievous bird. There was an awkward silence for a moment and then "Bijou" with characteristic diplomacy exclaimed:
"What an amusing bird, he speaks uncommonly well, though his words are not very appropriate, certainly."
A shadow passed over the face of the blind listener, a momentary pang shot through his breast, he clasped his hands convulsively, then turning to the stranger he said in a steady voice:
"Never mind the bird, he says queer things at times. Sir, I grant you the permission you come to seek, my gardener, Preston, will await you at whatever time you appoint, and conduct you through. Good-evening, Sir."
Taking this for dismissal, "Bijou" raised his hat, slightly pressed the hand of the beautiful Fifine, and the next moment he was gone.
A strange and awkward silence followed his departure. Much might have been said on such an unusual occurrence as this, yet neither chose to speak.
At last the evening sun as though weary of the quiet scene, gathered all his truant rays out of the tree tops and from the purple mountain summit, and sunk to rest behind the sombre clouds that twilight spread across the sky. Then Fifine who longed to be alone, kissed her father good-night and retired to her own little room, after telling the servant to light a lamp and take her father to his chamber.
The story of Fifine de Maistre's life, from the time of her adventure in the wood, until six months after, would be to the unsympathetic, the most monotonous series of details imaginable. There is no bore like a man or woman who is in love, to those whose precious privilege it never can be, to be guilty of such a natural offence. A man never tires of any one so quickly as he does of some fellow who is "mashed," and girls who are not engaged never count her who is, as strictly one of themselves.
This therefore may be constituted as a plea for refraining to dwell upon the time so laden with exquisite joy to Josephine de Maistre, the time that made up the days and nights of this period of her life at Sleepy Cottage. She had worked out such fallacious reasonings as justified her in the end, in holding clandestine meetings with her romantic lover, and so, each night when she had finished reading to her father, she stole quietly away to the rustic gate, at the end of the shrubbery, there to lend a willing ear to protestations of love and devotion, from the lips upon whose threshhold she knew, hung the words of her future destiny.
Things had gone thus far, when one night, Fifine in her old humor, was grumbling against the loneliness of her existence, and giving expression to her discontent in most touching terms. Her chivalrous adorer looked the picture of intense sympathy, as he lay stretched in the long grass at her feet.