But this was not all. He asked her if she would come into the conservatory. She had accompanied him there. Half hid by the branches of a camellia-tree all covered with white blossoms, she had said coldly, "Gerald, I cannot marry you." But Gerald had not received the word so coolly. He had burst out into passion. First he had exclaimed in wonder, next he could not believe her. "Would she treat him so ungenerously? Was she a heartless flirt, a mere coquette?" He told over his love that had been growing warmer all these three years; of his ambition that was to be crowned by her approval; of his lately gained wealth, valued only for her sake. Passionate words they were, and full of intense feeling; but hidden by the camellia, restrained and kept under from fear of observers. They were frequently interrupted, too. "Thank you--ninety-nine days; very quick passage. Yes, I go back next week; no, I stay at home," were, with other sentences, thrown in, as answers to the different questions of those who did not know what they were interrupting. But, at last, Aurelia broke away. Broke away! No; she accepted Middleton's proposal to go into the coffee-room, and left Gerald beneath the camellia. As I watched her from my loop-holes I could tell that Aurelia was going over all this scene in her mind. While her eyes were fixed upon the stage, she recalled every word and gesture of Gerald's. Yet, his reproaches, his just complaints, hardly weighed upon her now. She was looking on the vacant seat beside her, and wondering when Frank would come to take it. But "Lilly," the light-haired one, her thoughts were rushing back to the wild, gay polkas of the morning. Now by Aurelia's side, now away again; she had danced continually till the last moment, and when they came to tell her the carriage was ready, and she must come away, she had fainted. It was as she was going up-stairs into the drawing-room, just before she and her sisters made their grand entree, that Lilly had heard that "Cousin Joe" had not come home in the vessel with Gerald Lawson. He had gone to Europe by the overland route, and wild, mad fellow that he was, had determined to join the Russian troops in the Crimea. "And be shot there for his pains," Frank Leslie added carelessly. Cousin Joe hadn't come home! He didn't care to come home! He was going to be shot! She could think of nothing else. She could not keep still; she could not talk placidly like the rest; she must dance, and dance wildly and passionately. But a moment of reaction came. When the last strain of music had died away, all power of self-control had died away, too. No wonder that she had fainted! More wonder that she could recover herself; could resist her mother's entreaties, after all that dancing, to spare herself and stay from the opera. Here she was, outwardly lively and radiant, chatting with Lieutenant Preston, inwardly chafed at all this constraint, and wondering how it was Cousin Joe could stay so long away.