"Mr. Buckler," she said, speaking with difficulty, while the blood swirled in and out of her cheeks, "the present hurts me sorely, even though--nay, all the more because, it comes from you. It is the fashion, I know well, to believe that a few gems will bribe the good will of any woman. But I hardly thought that--that you held me in such poor esteem."
I protested that nothing could have been further from my designs than the notion which she attributed to me, and went so far as to hint that there was something extravagant and unreasonable in her anger. For, said I, the gift was no bribe but a tribute, and, I continued, with greater confidence as her pride diminished, if either of us had a right to feel hurt, it was myself, whom she insulted by the imputation of so mean a spirit.
"Then I am to humbly beg your pardon, I suppose," she cried, with another flash of anger.
"Oh, there's no arguing with you," I burst out in a heat no less violent than her own. "Who bids you beg my pardon? What makes you suppose I need you should, unless it be your own proper and fitting compunction? There's no moderation in your thoughts. You jump from one extreme to the other as nimbly as--as----"
I was turning away with the sentence unfinished, when:
"I could supply the simile you want," she said, with a whimsical demureness as sudden and inexplicable as her wrath, "only 'tis something indelicate," and she broke into a ringing laugh.
To a man of my slow disposition, whose very passions have a certain œconomy which delays their growth, the rapid transitions of a woman's humours have ever been confusing, and now I stood stockish and dumb, gazing at the Countess open-mouthed, and vainly endeavouring, like a fool, to reduce the various emotions she had expressed into a logical continuity.
"And there!" she continued, "now I have shocked you by lack of breeding!"
And once more she commenced to laugh with a mirth so natural and infectious that presently it gained on me, and for no definite reason that I could name I found myself laughing to her tune and with equal heartiness. 'Twas none the less a wiser action than any deliberation could have prompted me to, for here was our quarrel ended decisively, and no words said.
For a while we strolled up and down the lawn, Ilga interspacing her talk with little spirts of laughter, as now and again she looked at my face, until we stopped at the end of the garden, just before a small postern-door in the wall.