He met her at the gate of the Pleasaunce, but not alone.She was walking with an officer, a handsome, commanding, haughty, brilliant officer.She was walking by his side, talking earnestly to him.
An arrow of ice shot through young Riviere; and then came a feeling of death at his heart, a new symptom in his young life.
The next moment Rose caught sight of him.She flushed all over and uttered a little exclamation, and she bounded towards him like a little antelope, and put out both her hands at once.He could only give her one.
"Ah!" she cried with an accent of heavenly pity, and took his hand with both hers.
This was like the meridian sun coming suddenly on a cold place.He was all happiness.
When Josephine heard he was come her eye flashed, and she said quickly, "I will come down to welcome him--dear Edouard!"The sisters looked at one another.Josephine blushed.Rose smiled and kissed her.She colored higher still, and said, "No, she was ashamed to go down.""Why?"
"Look at my face."
"I see nothing wrong with it, except that it eclipses other people's, and I have long forgiven you that.""Oh, yes, dear Rose: look what a color it has, and a fortnight ago it was pale as ashes.""Never mind; do you expect me to regret that?""Rose, I am a very bad woman."
"Are you, dear? then hook this for me."
"Yes, love.But I sometimes think you would forgive me if you knew how hard I pray to be better.Rose, I do try so to be as unhappy as I ought; but I can't, I can't.My cold heart seems as dead to unhappiness as once it was to happiness.Am I a heartless woman after all?""Not altogether," said Rose dryly."Fasten my collar, dear, and don't torment yourself.You have suffered much and nobly.It was Heaven's will: you bowed to it.It was not Heaven's will that you should be blighted altogether.Bow in this, too, to Heaven's will:
take things as they come, and do cease to try and reconcile feelings that are too opposite to live together.""Ah! these are such comfortable words, Rose; but mamma will see this dreadful color in my cheek, and what can I say to her?""Ten to one it will not be observed; and if it should, I will say it is the excitement of seeing Edouard.Leave all to me."Josephine greeted Edouard most affectionately, drew from him his whole history, and petted him and sympathized with him deliciously, and made him the hero of the evening.Camille, who was not naturally of a jealous temper, bore this very well at first, but at last he looked so bitter at her neglect of him, that Rose took him aside to soothe him.Edouard, missing the auditor he most valued, and seeing her in secret conference with the brilliant colonel, felt a return of the jealous pangs that had seized him at first sight of the man; and so they played at cross purposes.
At another period of the evening the conversation became more general; and Edouard took a dislike to Colonel Dujardin.A young man of twenty-eight nearly always looks on a boy of twenty-one with the air of a superior, and this assumption, not being an ill-natured one, is apt to be so easy and so undefined that the younger hardly knows how to resent or to resist it.But Edouard was a little vain as we know; and the Colonel jarred him terribly.His quick haughty eye jarred him.His regimentals jarred him: they fitted like a glove.His mustache and his manner jarred him, and, worst of all, his cool familiarity with Rose, who seemed to court him rather than be courted by him.He put this act of Rose's to the colonel's account, according to the custom of lovers, and revenged himself in a small way by telling Josephine in her ear "that the colonel produced on his mind the effect of an intolerable puppy."Josephine colored up and looked at him with a momentary surprise.
She said quietly, "Military men do give themselves some airs, but he is very amiable at bottom.You must make a better acquaintance with him, and then he will reveal to you his nobler qualities."--"Oh! Ihave no particular desire," sneered unlucky Edouard.Sweet as Josephine was, this was too much for her: she said nothing; but she quietly turned Edouard over to Aubertin, and joined Rose, and under cover of her had a sweet timid chat with her falsely accused.
This occupied the two so entirely that Edouard was neglected.This hurt his foible, and seemed to be so unkind on the very first day of his return that he made his adieus to the baroness, and marched off in dudgeon unobserved.
Rose missed him first, but said nothing.
When Josephine saw he was gone, she uttered a little exclamation, and looked at Rose.Rose put on a mien of haughty indifference, but the water was in her eyes.
Josephine looked sorrowful.
When they talked over everything together at night, she reproached herself."We behaved ill to poor Edouard: we neglected him.""He is a little cross, ill-tempered fellow," said Rose pettishly.
"Oh, no! no!"
"And as vain as a peacock."
"Has he not some right to be vain in this house?""Yes,--no.I am very angry with him.I won't hear a word in his favor," said Rose pouting: then she gave his defender a kiss."Yes, dear," said Josephine, answering the kiss, and ignoring the words, "he is a dear; and he is not cross, nor so very vain, poor boy! now don't you see what it was?""No."
"Yes, you do, you little cunning thing: you are too shrewd not to see everything.""No, indeed, Josephine; do tell me, don't keep me waiting: I can't bear that.""Well, then--jealous! A little."
"Jealous? Oh, what fun! Of Camille? Ha! ha! Little goose!""And," said Josephine very seriously, "I almost think he would be jealous of any one that occupied your attention.I watched him more or less all the evening.""All the better.I'll torment my lord."
"Heaven forbid you should be so cruel."
"Oh! I will not make him unhappy, but I'll tease him a little; it is not in nature to abstain."This foible detected in her lover, Rose was very gay at the prospect of amusement it afforded her.
And I think I have many readers who at this moment are awaiting unmixed enjoyment and hilarity from the same source.
I wish them joy of their prospect.
