He obeyed her. When he could see her again he said, “Well?”
“I—I want you to say that you forgive me,” she said, earnestly. “I want to see that you forgive me.”
He looked at her in a friendly way. “I understand how it is with you. I don’t in the least blame you. Only, in my country, we never permit any one to take that tone towards us. And now, please, Your Majesty of the Oak Tree, may I go for the rifle?”
“May I say that you mustn’t?” she asked, a smile in her eyes.
“I’d like to have a reason.”
“Well, in the first place”—she hesitated—“it isn’t loaded.”
He looked at her searchingly. She blushed.
“Is it your rifle?” he asked.
“Yes; I always carry it when I walk in the woods; there’s a chance that something disagreeable might escape from the forest into the park, though the fences are strong and high. And to-day when the boar came at me”—she looked as though she felt very foolish—“my foot caught and—I dropped the rifle.”