"Pardon me," he said hastily. "It was very stupid in me to thus startle you, but you seemed so intent on something upon the river that I thought you would never see me."
"I—I was not expecting you," she faltered.
"Then I have done wrong—have been mistaken in coming."
"O, no; I did not mean that. I thought you were in New York. We expected you this evening."
"Shall I go away then, and come back this evening?"
"Yes; come back this evening, but do not go now,—that is, just yet. I have something to say to you. Please forgive my confusion. I fear my nerves have been shaken by what I have passed through."
And yet such "confusion" in one usually so composed did puzzle him, but he said hastily, feeling that it would be better to break the ice at once, "I came here not to 'forgive,' but to seek your forgiveness."
"You seeking my forgiveness!" she said in unfeigned surprise.
"Yes," he replied, humbly bowing his head. "Heaven knows that I am weak and faulty enough, but when I have wronged any one, I am willing to make acknowledgment and reparation. I cannot tell you how eager I have been to make such acknowledgment to you, whom I revere as my good angel. I acted like a fool in the chapel last Monday afternoon, and did you great injustice. You have never shone on me 'coldly and distantly like a star,' but again and again have stooped from the height of your heavenly character that you might lift me out of the mire. It's a mystery to me how you can do it. But believe me, when I am myself, I am grateful; and," he continued slowly, his square jaw growing firm and rigid, and a sombre, resolute light coming into his large dark eyes, "if you will have patience with me, I will yet do credit to the good advice, written in a school-girl's hand, which I keep treasured in my room. Weak and foolish as I have been, I should have been far worse were it not for those letters, and—and your kindness since. But I am offending you," he said sadly, as Alice averted her face. "However the future may separate us, I wanted you to know that I gratefully appreciate all the kindness of the past. I sincerely crave your forgiveness for my folly last Monday. For some reason I was not myself. I was blinded with—I said what I knew to be untrue. Though you might with justice have shone on me as 'coldly and distantly as a star,' you have treated me almost as a sister might. Please say that I am forgiven, and I will go at once."
Imagine his surprise when, as her only response, she said abruptly,
"Mr. Harcourt, come with me."