“Pardon, mademoiselle,” he began.
Her Serene Highness flushed with anger and her gray eyes blazed. “This is insufferable!” she exclaimed. “If you do not leave—”
“Your handkerchief,” he said, extending it, his eyes smiling but his face grave.
She looked at it in horror. “Monsieur is mistaken,” she said, fighting against embarrassment and a feeling that she had made herself ridiculous.
“Mademoiselle is mistaken—doubly mistaken,” he replied, tranquilly. “The handkerchief bears her monogram, and”—here he smiled satirically—“if mademoiselle is vain enough to mistake common courtesy for impudence, I am not vain enough to mistake accident—even twice repeated accident—for design.”
She looked at him with generous, impulsive repentance and took the handkerchief from his outstretched hand. “It is mine,” she said, in English, “and I regret my foolish mistake.” Her tone had no suggestion of condescension. It was the tone of the universal woman in presence of the universal man.
He bowed his appreciation without speaking and went rapidly away.
