Читать книгу A Comedy of Elopement онлайн

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“No, no—not here. We must go upstairs. Are you able to walk?”

“Oh, yes—why not?” answered Aimée. “I was out of breath when I came in; that was all.”

“You looked as if you were about to faint,” said Fanny, taking up her lamp. “How thankful I am that it is over, and that you are safely back!”

Aimée might have assured the speaker that her thankfulness on this point was trifling compared to her own, but the action of her heart not being yet sufficiently regulated to make speech easy, she silently followed Miss Berrien’s stealthy footsteps upstairs.

Once safely in their own room, Fanny was full of eager questioning.

“You saw him!” she exclaimed. “Did you give him my message? How did he take it? What did he say?”

“Yes, I saw him,” replied Aimée. “He was waiting, and at first could scarcely believe that it was not you—”

“Poor fellow!” cried Fanny, in feeling parenthesis.

“But when he understood that it was not you, and that you meant to throw him over,” proceeded Aimée, not without a sense of pleasure in the recital, “he was very indignant, and he told me to tell you that you would never have another opportunity to treat him in such a manner, and that he came here meaning this to be the decisive test: that if you cared for him you would come with him, and that if you did not come he would never ask you again. It was to-night or never.”