" She
gave a convulsive twitch to the strings, and pulled them into a hard
knot. "Can't you brush it off?" she asked Edward breathlessly.
"Pray do not be so alarmed. No, indeed, I couldn't brush it off. It
sticks too fast for that. I wish," he said, as she made a frantic
lurch towards him, "that you could be mild but firm--I mean not quite
so agitated." Her breath came in quick perfumed wafts into his face,
as his steady fingers strove to undo the knot in her ribbons. But even
after this lengthy business was concluded his trouble (if it could
rightly be called a trouble) was only half over, for the careful Rose,
with a prudent foreknowledge of the power of lake breezes to
disarrange, if not carry away altogether, the headgear of helpless
woman, had by some ingenious arrangement of hair-pins fastened the
bonnet to the raven locks of her friend in such a manner that it could
not be removed without endangering the structure of her elaborate
hair-architecture. So it was among the dark waves of rapidly
down-flowing tresses that Helene's voice was again heard beseeching
him to tell her what it was.
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