At the same moment Emile, with a smile on his face, turned towards her with the fan in his hand.
"Oh, you've found it," she said, with nervous eagerness.

"I was so afraid you'd have all your trouble for nothing." She extended her hand, with a half-breathless smile, for the fan, but he caught her outstretched little palm in his own, and held it.
"Ah! but you are not going to leave us, are you ?" In a flash of consciousness she understood him, and, as it seemed to her, her own nervousness, and all, and everything.

And with it came a swift appreciation of all it meant to her and her future.

To be always with him and like him, a part of this refined and restful seclusion--akin to all that had so attracted her in this house; not to be obliged to educate herself up to it, but to be in it on equal terms at once; to know that it was no wild, foolish youthful fancy, but a wise, thoughtful, and prudent resolve, that her father would understand and her friends respect: these were the thoughts that crowded quickly upon her, more like an explanation of her feelings than a revelation, in the brief second that he held her hand.

It was not, perhaps, love as she had dreamed it, and even BELIEVED it, before.