He disappeared. Rose got up and moved uneasily towards the window. "How
queer and quiet it looks outside. It's really too bad that he should be
sent after that fan again. He'll never find it." She resumed her place
at the piano, Adele following her with round, expectant eyes. After a
pause she started up again. "I'll go and fetch it myself," she said,
with a half-embarrassed laugh, and ran to the door.

Scarcely understanding her own nervousness, but finding relief in rapid
movement, Rose flew lightly up the staircase. The major's study, where
she had been writing letters, during his absence, that morning, was at
the further end of a long passage, and near her own bedroom, the door of
which, as she passed, she noticed, half-abstractedly, was open, but she
continued on and hurriedly entered the study. At the same moment Emile,
with a smile on his face, turned towards her with the fan in his hand.

"Oh, you've found it," she said, with nervous eagerness. "I was so
afraid you'd have all your trouble for nothing."

She extended her hand, with a half-breathless smile, for the fan, but he
caught her outstretched little palm in his own, and held it.

"Ah! but you are not going to leave us, are you?"

In a flash of consciousness she understood him, and, as it seemed to
her, her own nervousness, and all, and everything. And with it came a
swift appreciation of all it meant to her and her future. To be
always with him and like him, a part of this refined and restful
seclusion--akin to all that had so attracted her in this house; not to
be obliged to educate herself up to it, but to be in it on equal terms
at once; to know that it was no wild, foolish youthful fancy, but a