"Gabrielle!" Oswald began at last with hesitation and very gently, "I have come very often of late to the Avenue-Labédoyère. Can you guess why?"
"Why?" The blush on Gabrielle's cheek deepens. "Why?--since you were in Paris for three weeks without coming near your relatives you ought to make up for lost time," she murmured.
"True, Gabrielle--but--do you really not know for whose sake I have come so often, so very often?"
His breath came more quickly, the colour rose to his cheek. Surely he must have divined Gabrielle's innocent secret from the young girl's tell-tale shyness, but yet at this decisive moment the words died in his throat as they must for every genuine, honest lover who would fain ask the momentous question of her whom he loves.
"Gabrielle," he murmured hastily and somewhat indistinctly, "will you take the full heart I offer you--can you accept it, or...." he hesitated and looked inquiringly into her lovely face. "Ella, all my happiness lies in your hands!"
Her heart beat loudly, the lace ruffles on her bosom trembled, as she slowly lifted her eyes to his.--How handsome he was, how well the tender humility in his face became him! His happiness lies in her hands! Her eyes filled with tears. "I do not know ... I ... Oswald ... Ossi!" she murmured disconnectedly, and then she placed her slender hand in the strong one held out to her.
Truyn with his back to the window, noticed nothing, but the baroness who had been observing this romantic intermezzo through her eyeglass with cold-blooded curiosity, said drily to herself: "_J'en suis pour mes frais_;" then turning for the last time to Truyn, she said, "I have communicated to you Capriani's proposal."
"And you are at liberty to tell him how I received it," Truyn replied stiffly.
"_J'arrangerai un peu_," the baroness said as she rose, "do not disturb the young people, I will slip out on tiptoe. Adieu." And with a courteous glance around, she hurried away.
"Well, what do you think?" exclaimed Truyn, as he returned to the drawing-room, after escorting her to the hall. "What do you think, Georges?" and sitting down beside the young man he tapped him on the knee. "Capriani sends that goose Zoë in all seriousness to ask for my daughter's hand for his son. What do you say to that?"