'So you think, dear Cecil, I could make your life a happy one?'
She asked this softly, yet a little imperiously, while flicking the skirt of her riding-habit impatiently with her switch, and with downcast looks, as Cecil paused in perplexity, thinking, 'What had he said to draw this forth?'
'Surely I am not so uncivilised; I don't ever paint and powder, like all the English girls I saw at Vienna!' she added.
'But,' said poor Cecil, who thought he had perils enough to encounter, without thus being 'run to earth,' and having this perplexity added to them, by an impulsive girl, who probably had something Hungarian and Italian in her blood, inherited from the old heyduc; 'but they don't all wear paint and powder—and one girl I knew at home certainly did not do so.'
This was, to say the least of it, an unfortunate speech.
'One,' said Margarita, with a flash in her eyes; 'who was she?'
'One of whom you remind me—at times,' he replied, thinking to compliment her by saying that which was simply untrue.
'Who was she—who is she—one you cared for?'
'Not as I care for you,' replied Cecil unwisely, yet truthfully enough; 'but long ago—ah, how long ago it seems—she passed out of my life, and I out of hers.'
'She is dead, then?'