“You are really horribly rude,” she said.
“I daresay I am. As a cultivated young lady of family, you should have more prescriptive tact than to provoke the natural boor in me.”
“I don’t believe it is natural. I believe, in your bitterness, you are resolved to make yourself out much worse than you are.”
“That is very generous of you. And you have come, moreover, to beg my pardon—for what?”
Her mouth opened a little. She seemed to deprecate my expression very entreatingly. Her eyebrows took a pained arch, her eyes a speaking wistfulness.
“Richard,” she said—“don’t be so angry, so unforgiving with me!”
“Why do you think me either? I ask you again, what have you come to beg my pardon for?”
Her lips quivered as she looked up at me. She seemed unable to speak for a moment.
“It was cruel,” she whispered at last—“so cruel and ungenerous, that I could only wish at the moment that I wasn’t bound to her by so many ties of affection. But I am, and I will be loyal.”
“Are you apologising for Lady Skene?”