But she placed her finger to her lips and silence again ensued. They did not, however, have to wait very long, for the summer storms come and pass away like birds. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour they left the church. The streets were flooded by the rain, but through the rifts of the scattered and rent clouds the sun shone brightly and, it seemed, moistly. Miss Anney's eyes winked under the flood of light and her countenance was as if she was awakened from a dream. But her composure and gravity did not pass away. Ladislaus, on the other hand, at the sight of the sun, and the bustle and life on the streets, was at once imbued with gayety and hope. He glanced once and again at his companion and she seemed to him as wonderful as a dream, charming as never before, and adorable simply beyond measure and bounds. He felt that he was capable of seizing her at that moment in his arms; of showing her to the sun, the clouds, the city, the human multitude, and exclaiming: "Behold my wealth, my treasure; this is the joy of my life!" But, conjecturing properly that Miss Anney would not assent to any manifestations like that, he subdued this impulse and directed his thoughts to more important matters. "My adored lady," said he, "I must give utterance to words which burn my lips. When may I come to see you?" "To-day at four," she replied; "I also have to tell you something upon which everything depends." "Everything depends upon you, lady, and upon nothing else." But her clear cheeks were suffused with confused blushes: her eyes shone as if with disagreeable uneasiness; and she replied: "God grant--you do not know, sir--you do not know sir--" she repeated with emphasis. "We will be alone.--But now we must part." Ladislaus escorted her to the carriage, kissed her hands and remained alone. Her words, corroborating that which Gronski had intimated as a result of his interviews with Pani Otocka, disquieted him, however, but only for a short time, as he was too much in love to suppose that it could change his love or swerve him from his purpose. At the mere thought of this he shrugged his shoulders. "Women," he said to himself, "are always full of scruples and to actual difficulties they add chimerical ones." After which, he returned home in the best of humor, and besides Gronski, found there Dolhanski. "Behold," exclaimed Gronski, "lo, here is Dolhanski the bachelor. Congratulate him for he is going to marry." "No?" Truly? asked Ladislaus, amused. "With Panna Kajetana Wlocek," added Dolhanski, with sangfroid and extraordinary gravity. "Then I tender my best wishes from the whole heart. When is the wedding?" "Very soon, on account of the weather, famine, fire, and war, also similar exceptional circumstances. In a week. Without publication of the banns, on an _indult_. After the wedding, the same night a trip abroad." "And you say all this seriously?" "With the greatest seriousness in the world. Observe the exquisite consequences."