With her cooing murmur of a laugh, yet pale, pale, and with a
most guilty look, she presented me a large bouquet of wild flowers.
I was at once thrown into a state of great agitation. She was dressed in
rather a frippery of _mousseline de soie_, all cream-laced, with
wide-hanging short sleeves, a large diamond at the low open neck, the
ivory-brown skin there contrasting with the powdered bluish-white of her
face, where, however, the freckles were not quite whited out; on her
feet little pink satin slippers, without any stockings--a divinely pale
pink; and well back on her hair a plain thin circlet of gold; and she
smelled like heaven, God knows.
I could not speak. She broke an awkward silence, saying, very faint and
pallid:
'It is the day!'
'I--perhaps--' I said, or some incoherency like that.
I saw the touch of enthusiasm which she had summoned up quenched by my
manner.
'I have not done long again?' she asked, looking down, breaking another
silence.
'No, no, oh no,' said I hurriedly: 'not done wrong again.
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