He nodded.
"How do you like the change?—this still, quiet life in the Thames valley. Are you tired of it already? Will you pine for all the gayeties you have left?"
Stella looked up at him—his eyes were still fixed on hers.
"I have left no gayeties," she said. "I left a bare and horrid school that was as unlike home as the desert of Sahara is like this lovely meadow. How do I feel? As if I had been translated to Paradise—as if I, who was beginning to think that I was alone in the world I had no business to be in, had found some one friend to love——"
She paused, and he, glancing at the black waistband to her white dress, said, with the tenderest, most humble voice:
"I beg your pardon. Will you forgive me?—I did not know——"
And his voice broke.
Stella looked up at him with a smile shining through the unshed tears.
"How—why should you know? Yes, I was quite alone in the world. My father died a year ago."
"Forgive me," he murmured; and he laid his hand with a feather's weight on her arm. "I implore you to forgive me. It was cruel and thoughtless."