A Woman's Will Part 64

She lifted up her hand and closed his big eyes with its soft touch.

"I loved you in Lucerne," she declared to his blindness, "that first moment when I saw you walking on the Quai. I did not know why, but I felt that I _must_ know you."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away and laughed.

"_Voila!_" he exclaimed; "what have I say to you that time in Munich, that the women are always _genees_! You love in Lucerne, and insist not for all the summer after."

Then they laughed together.

"Would you have liked me to have told you there on the Quai? would you have believed it?"

"Yes," he said gravely; "I would have believed it very well, because I also knew the same. In the hotel I had seen you, and on the Promenade I said myself, '_Voila la jolie Americaine encore une fois!_' You see!"

She wondered how she had ever for a moment thought that his eyes were melancholy, they appeared so big and bright and joyous now.

"When did you come?" she remembered to ask after a long time.

"I am come yesterday morning."

"Before we did?"

"Oh, yes; because I have very much here to do."

"In Genoa?"

"Yes; and Jack and I have been out all this morning also."

"And I never knew!"

He looked a little uneasy and rose to his feet.

"There is something very serious that I must say," he said, standing before her.

She looked up in a little anxiety; a crowd of ordinary, every-day thoughts suddenly swarmed into her mind.

"Do not be _genee_!" he implored parenthetically; "what I have to say is so most important."

"I am not _genee_," she a.s.sured him.

"Then why do you not come and stand by me?" he asked. "If you love me and will not show it, I am to be very unhappy always."

Rosina laughed; but she stood up and went close to him at once.

"I do love you," she said, "and I am not at all afraid to show it. You see!"

He took her face between his hands and gazed down fondly upon her.

"Love is good, is it not?" he said. "There is a great joy to me to hold you so, and reflect upon those stairs at Munich."

He paused--perhaps in consideration of the Munichian stairs--for a moment, and then said:

"I have heard that there is love so strong that it crushes; if I ever take hold of you so that your bones break, it is only that I think of the stairs in Munich."

She laughed again.

"I will remember," she said, not at all frightened.

He took her two hands tightly within his own.

"I must now say that very serious thing."

"But I shall not run away."

"No, but you may be surprised and unarrange yourself before I can hold you to stop."

"Go on," she begged.

"It is this: Jack and I have been out all this morning, because all must be very ready; I--" he stopped.

"You are going with us?" she exclaimed joyously.

"No; I--"

"You are not going before we do?"

He smiled and shook his head.

Then he drew her very closely and tenderly to him and kissed her eyes and forehead.

"It is that I am to be married to-morrow," he told her softly, and held her tightly as the shock of his words ran quivering through her.

"And I!" she gasped, after two or three paralyzed seconds.

"Naturally you are to be married also."

She stared mutely up into the rea.s.surance of his smile.

"Jack and I find that best," he said. "I have no time to go to America to bring you again, and all is quite good arranged. I have telegraphed to Dresden about a larger apartment, and those papers from the lawyers in New York waited here when you came. We may not marry like peasants, you and I, you know."

She felt completely overcome.

"_To-morrow!_" she said, at last.

"Yes," he said placidly; "I am much hasted to be again in the north, and we have arranged with the consuls--your consul and my consul--for to-morrow."

"But my steamer pa.s.sage!"

"Oh, that your cousin has given up; all the money has been returned. I think for a little that we will go with him as far as Naples, but I go and look at your stateroom this morning, and I have just a _centimetre_ more than the berth."