t, must be
paid in person, or it would never be paid at all. Mrs. Lascelles, I
owed and do owe you about the most abject apology man ever made! I have
followed you all this way for no other earthly reason than to make it,
in all sincere humility. But it has taken me more or less since Tuesday
morning; and I can't kneel here. Do you mind if I sit down?"

Mrs. Lascelles drew in the hem of her pink muslin, with an all but
insufferable gesture of unwilling resignation. I took the next chair but
one, but, leaning my elbow on the chair-back between us, was rather the
gainer by the intervening inches, which enabled me to study a perfect
profile and the most wonderful colouring as I could scarcely have done
at still closer range. She never turned to look at me, but simply
listened while the band played, and people passed, and I said my say. It
was very short: there was so little that she did not know. There was the
excitement about Bob, his subsequent reappearance, our scene in his room
and my last sight of him in the morning; but the bare facts went into
few words, and there was no demand for details. Mrs. Lascelles seemed to
have lost all interest in her latest lover; but when I tried to speak
of my own hateful hand in that affair, to explain what I could of it,
but to extenuate nothing, and to apologise from my heart for it all,
then there was a change in her, then her blood mounted, then her bosom
heaved, and I was silenced by a single flash from her eyes.

"Yes," said she, "you could let him think you were in earnest, you could
pose as his rival, you could pretend all that! Not to me, I grant you!
Even you did not go quite so far as that; or was it that you knew that I
should see through you? You made up for it, however, the other night.
That I never, never, never shall forgive. I, who had never seriously
thought of accepting him, who was only hesitating in order to refuse him
in the most deliberate and final manner imaginable--I, to have the word
put into my mouth--by you! I, who was going in any case, of my own
accord, to be told to go--by you! One thing you will never know, Captain
Clephane, and that is how nearly you drove me into marrying him just to
spite you and his miserable mother. I meant to do it, that night when I
left you. It would have served you right if I had!"

She did not rise. She did not look at me again. But I saw the tears
standing in her eyes, one I saw roll down her cheek, and the sight smote
me h