"I have done you a great wrong!"
"We will say no more about it, sir. It was a mistake, and I do not wish to complicate the question. My true ground of quarrel with you is your conduct to Miss Lavington. She seems to have told you her true name, so I shall call her by it."
"What I have done, I have undone!" said Stangrave, looking up. "If I have wronged her, I have offered to right her; if I have left her, I have sought her again; and if I left her when I knew nothing, now that I know all, I ask her here, before you, to become my wife!"
Tom looked inquiringly at Marie.
"Yes; I have told him all—all?" and she hid her face in her hands.
"Well," said Tom, "Mr. Stangrave is a very enviable person; and the match in a worldly point of view, is a most fortunate one for Miss Lavington; and that stupid rascal of a gendarme has broken my revolver."
"But I have not accepted him," cried Marie; "and I will not unless you give me leave."
Tom saw Stangrave's brow lower, and pardonably enough, at this.
"My dear Miss Lavington, as I have never been able to settle my own love affairs satisfactorily to myself, I do not feel at all competent to settle other people's. Good-bye! I shall be late for the steamer." And, bowing to Stangrave and Marie, he turned to go.
"Sabina! Stop him!" cried she; "he is going, without even a kind word!"