A deep musical voice and a slightly foreign accent. It seemed to excite her. She trembled from head to foot, and tried to rise from her seat. He put out his hand to detain her. "Not yet," he said sternly. "I must know first what all this means."
She looked up wonderingly.
"Ah! you know well," he continued more rapidly, and his voice taking a firmer timbre. "Why have you hid yourself? Why have you fled to the outskirts of creation to avoid me? Why are you shocked, terrified, when in my tenderest voice I speak the dear name you used to love to hear from my lips? Have I grown so very monstrous, or do you wish to kill yourself with this savage loneliness that your English nation so dearly loves? Speak! speak!—or rather speak not at all. Let me sit here for ever and feast my eyes on the loveliness a woman's whim has hid from me so long. Marguerite! Marguerite! my white pearl, it will be difficult for you to hide from me again."
She had risen to her feet, the angry color coming and going on her fair face, but, crouching before her, he held her by the dress and refused to let her stir.
"Marguerite," he cried, bitter pain in his voice, "I know I speak folly; you are not one of my warm race; you are a cold daughter of proud England. But see, love, I will be patient. Sit down again. I am not near you now; only," and his brow contracted into a frown so fierce that it might mean a menace, "I am here now, and I must and will be heard."
Margaret reseated herself, but her face grew pale with suppressed anger. "If it is the manner of your race to insult the unprotected," she said bitterly, "I must congratulate myself on the fact that I do not belong to it."
His face kindled. "Spoken like yourself, ma reine," he said softly. "I kiss your hands. I am, what I have ever been, your devoted servitor."
"If so, Mr. L'Estrange," she said, slowly and distinctly, but as if speaking with some difficulty, "I must beg you to leave me at once."
He smiled—a smile that irradiated his face like sunshine: "I was rash, ma belle; sometimes obedience is an impossibility. But see! what are you afraid of? Look at me, devoted to you body and soul, your friend, ready to do you the smallest service; only asking this in return, that I may be permitted to stay where I can see you, can offer you kindly greeting from time to time—a common acquaintance, nothing more."