There was, to be sure, a woman with raven hair and dead-white cheek at the Ferida, but there was also a woman yonder, and handier, with golden hair and shell-pink cheek; and variety was much to his taste, at times—and the picture on the stair still lingered with him, fresh and alluring. True, she had not received his advances with that flattered acquiescence he was rather used to, but he had no particular objection to temporary opposition; it gave zest to the victory—and, with him, victory had been rarely lost.
He encountered her in a narrow path, walled in by thick hedges of scarlet japonica, turning the corner suddenly and greeting her with a smile of well assumed surprise; stopping quite a little way off and bowing, his cap across his heart.
And she stopped, also; touched by fear and repugnance, as though a snake lay in her path.
“A happy meeting, mademoiselle,” he said.
“For whom, sir?” she asked, turning half away.
“For me,” he laughed, going toward her; “and for you, too, I hope.”
She put her back to the hedge and made no answer.
“I owe you a very abject apology, for the other day,” he said, standing close beside her, and leaning on his sword. “I fear I was brutally rude.”
“There isn’t the least doubt of it,” she replied, and made to pass on.
He stepped before her.