She promised willingly, though she could not look him in the face, she was so horribly ashamed.
Then she had run home, and cried and cried without knowing whether from bliss or misery. When the sisters came creeping in at four o'clock in the morning--they had let down the bars of their propriety on New Year's Eve--she was still crying.
On rising, she came to the conclusion he could not possibly have been serious and he would take the first opportunity to recant--perhaps that very day.
She would not complain if he did. On the contrary she would breathe freer, and thank God for having rid her of the presence of a phantom.
A box of roses was delivered, the size and cost of which aroused the disapproving amazement of the sisters, who knew to a penny the price of roses at that season, and reckoned a sum greatly exceeding Lilly's wages for several months.
"I cannot for the life of me see," said the older, "why you don't yield to such a magnificent admirer. With us, of course, it's different. We belong to society, and we cannot give ourselves up. But you, nothing more than a shop girl, with no family to have to consider! Besides, there's no doubt but that shame has its charms. I in your place would make a venture--"
The younger and more sentimental sister opposed the older one's advice.
"The first time it should be from pure love," she said. "You owe it to your own soul, even if you are only a shop girl."
Without coming to an agreement upon this debatable point, they went off to witness the change of guards, which Colonel von Mertzbach, they said, contemplated directing in his own person on New Year's day, and the Colonel, reputed to be a very handsome man pursued by all the marriageable girls in society, was someone they wanted to see.
Lilly patted and kissed the roses of the upper stratum, and would have done the same to all in the box, had there not been so many.
Then she took heart, locked the door, and went to St. Anne's to pay St. Joseph a visit.
She nearly met the officers hastening to the main guard face to face, but managed in the nick of time to escape down a side street.
High mass had just concluded and had left an odor of incense and poor people between the arched aisles. A few persons were still praying at the side altars.