Читать книгу A Comedy of Elopement онлайн

3 страница из 51

“You understand now, Aimée, how it is, and how I am almost at my wit’s end to know what to do. I declare it is almost enough to make one wish one were ugly, to be tormented as I am!”

“I would not wish that,” said Aimée. “It is like a novel—only better—to be as pretty as you are, and to know that two men love you to distraction; that you are almost engaged to one, but that you love the other and are going to elope with him—”

“Hush!” cried the other, with a pressure of the arm she held almost as sharp as the tone of her voice. “Think, if somebody were to hear you! I am not going to elope with him! That is just the point. I have promised—but I can not, I can not! I like him—of course, I like him—but I don’t like him well enough to ruin all my life for him, to give up everything and break mamma’s heart. Aimée, I can’t do it.”

“What are you going to do, then?” asked Aimée, while her eyes seemed to grow momently larger and darker and more full of interest.

To an impressionable girl of fifteen, with her head full of romances, all this was thrilling beyond expression. A beautiful girl, a worldly mother, two ardent suitors, and an elopement planned—what could any romance furnish better? Yet it was here in her own every-day world, and she was promoted to the dignity of receiving the confidences of the heroine. What could life hold more exciting, save the joy, of which she as yet hardly dreamed, of being a heroine herself?