'Stay one minute,' he said. 'I have been anything but courteous in my way of speaking to you, but it was better to put off idle forms, was it not?'
'Yes; I shall know henceforth what you think of me.'
'Not from this one conversation, if you mean that.'
'Well, it does not matter.'
'Perhaps not. Difference of opinion has fortunately little to do with old-standing kindness.'
'I am not sure that you are right, at all events when it has expressed itself in words of contempt.'
It was not resentment that her voice conveyed, but some thing which Wilfrid found it harder to bear. Her drooped eyelids and subdued tone indicated a humble pride, which the protest of her beauty made pathetic.
'We will never speak of such things again,' he said gently. 'Let me have your forgiveness. When we join them down there, they will laugh at us and say we have been quarrelling as usual; in future I think we mustn't quarrel, we are both of us getting too old for the amusement. When you sing to us to-night, I shall remember how foolish I was even to pretend contempt.'
'You will be thinking,' she said, 'that I am a mere amateur.'
'If I do, I shall be an ungrateful wretch—and an insensible one, to boot.'