Enter Oliver, running down the steps of a terrace, dizzy with joy, like one in the bewildering glamour of a golden dream. He seemed to tread upon air! The blue sky, green foliage, the flowers, the statues, the rivers, swam together in a confusion of bewildered delight. At the sound of his footsteps she raises her eyes, and lays aside her book, and greets him with the smile of an acquaintance.
"Oh!" said she; "it is you, then? I have been waiting for you."
Oliver's heart was fluttering within him. At first he could not speak, and she must have read his joy and his secret in his face, for the rosy hue upon her cheeks deepened.
He sank upon his knees beside her. "I love you," he whispered, tremulously.
Her face was turned away from him, but she did not withdraw the hand which he held. There was a long time of silence. Oliver raised her hand to his lips.
"He bade me seek you here," cried Oliver, eagerly. Then again: "Oh, Céleste, I love you! I love you!"
She turned her face towards him; her eyes met his then. Could he believe it? Was it real? His lips met others, soft, warm, fragrant. The flowers, the parterres, the trees, the blue sky, the white marble statues--all dissolved into a golden ether. Flourens? It was heaven!
Madame the Marquise made no objection to it all. She had become accustomed to Oliver and his diamonds. He was a pleasant, cheerful, handsome fellow. It made her heart feel lighter to have him about. As was said, she had forgiven the ill taste of the display of diamonds, and now expressed her approval of the arrangement. Oliver's heaven was without a cloud.
SCENE EIGHTH.--_The marquis's private closet._
A month had passed--a month of delight, of joy, of love; and then one morning the Marquis de Flourens let fall a torpedo in the midst of Oliver's little paradise. That morning, when Oliver went to the château, the marquis sent for him. Oliver found him seated at the table, playing idly with a gold pencil-case. He did not ask Oliver to be seated, but went directly to the point.
[Illustration: "HE SANK ON HIS KNEES BESIDE HER."]
"A week from next Monday," said he, "we shall go to Paris. You also, my dear Oliver."
Oliver stood like one stunned. He made no answer, but his mind, in a single sweep, cleared the whole horizon. To Paris! He remembered the master's commands--those commands so terribly absolute; he remembered his threats of punishment if he (Oliver) should disobey that mandate. What was that threat? Oliver remembered it well. It was that that terrible mysterious being, who had so nearly doomed him to a dreadful, unspeakable death, would crush him, would annihilate him, would make him wish a thousand times, in his torments, that he had never been born. Those were almost the very words, and Oliver had not forgotten them. He had learned much of his master in the year that he had lived with him, and he knew that that threat was not idle. He knew that the master would do as he said to the last jot and tittle. That cool, smiling, sinister devil! He could destroy all of this happiness as easily as one can destroy a beautiful soap-bubble that a child has created from nothing.