Miss Roussillon, you do me a wrong; I beg a
thousand pardons if I've hurt you," he cried, stepping nearer to her,
"and I can never forgive myself. You have somehow misunderstood me, I
know you have!"

On his part it was exaggerating a mere contact of mutual feelings into
a dangerous collision. He was as much self-deceived as was she, and he
made more noise about it.

"It is you who have misunderstood me," she replied, smiling brightly
now, but with just a faint, pitiful touch of regret, or self-blame
lingering in her voice. "Father Beret said you would. I did not believe
him; but--"

"And you shall not believe him," said Beverley. "I have not
misunderstood you. There has been nothing. You have treated me kindly
and with beautiful friendliness. You have not done or said a thing that
Father Beret or anybody else could criticise. And if I have said or
done the least thing to trouble you I repudiate it--I did not mean it.
Now you believe me, don't you, Miss Roussillon?"

He seemed to be falling into the habit of speaking to her in English.
She understood it somewhat imperfectly, especially when in an earnest
moment he rushed his words together as if they had been soldiers he was
leading at the charge-step against an enemy. His manner convinced her,
even though his diction fell short.

"Then we'll talk about something else," she said, laughing naturally
now, and retreating to a chair by the hearthside. "I want you to tell
me all about yourself and your family, your home and everything."

She seated herself with an air of conscious aplomb and motioned him to
take a distant stool.

There was a great heap of dry logs in the fireplace, with pointed
flames shooting out of its crevices and leaping into the gloomy,
cave-like throat of the flue. Outside a wind passed heavily across the
roof and bellowed in the chimney-top.

Beverley drew the stool near Alice, who, with a charred stick, used as
a poker, was thrusting at the glowing crevices and sending showers of
sparks aloft.

"Why, there wouldn't be much to tell," he said, glad to feel secure
again. "Our home is a big old mansion named Beverley Hall on a hill
among trees, and half surrounded with slave cabins. It overlooks the
plantation in the valley where a little river goes wandering on its
way." He was speaking French and she followed him easily now, her eyes
beginning to fling out again their natural sunny beams of interest. "I
was born there twenty-six years ago