Major King’s conduct had been in the highest degree reprehensible, but he had been led on to it by the slights the other offered him. And then, too, she had a keen perception of what Major King’s opportunities had probably been. He belonged to the class of impoverished Southerners who had lost everything by the war, and had probably spent most of the years of his manhood in a small village, living in a style that formed a strong contrast to the affluence of his youth. His bearing, during this trying evening, she attributed much to ignorance and much to the stinging sense of failure and defeat, which the war had left on so many Southern men. Added to all this, there must have been a keen indignation at the unjustness and insolence with which he was treated by a man from whom he had a right to expect common civility at least.
But with Louis Gaston it was different. He could not plead the excuse of isolation and ignorance. He was a cultivated man of the world, who had all the advantages of education, travel, and wealth; and, more than all, his offence was heinous, in a Southern mind, because it had been committed against the stranger within the gates.
“Nothing can ever wipe it out,” she muttered to herself; “the longer one thinks of it the worse it grows. There are half-a-dozen palliations for Major King, but for Mr. Gaston there is not one. I am certain that Major King, in spite of it all, would have been incapable of treating his worst enemy so. What a mortifying, humiliating experience!”
And, with a gesture of disgust, Miss Trevennon rose and walked to the dressing-table, beginning slowly to unfasten her little ornaments, in preparation for the night’s rest, which, in her perturbed state of mind, was very long in coming to her.
Louis Gaston, meanwhile, left to his own reflections, grew conscious of the fact that he was feeling very uncomfortable. The sensation was not by any means a new one. He had harbored it, uninterruptedly, for the past three hours, but it had undergone a change in kind and degree. He was relieved from the intolerable infliction of Major King’s presence, but unrest in another form had entered his breast; and though its nature was less tangible and aggressive, it somehow seemed to strike deeper.
He could not be blind to the fact that he had offended Margaret, whose conduct during the evening had really puzzled him as much as his had puzzled her. How could she bear to be pleasant and civil to a man like that? It made him angry to think of the fellow’s daring even to speak to her, and he assured himself that he had been perfectly right to pursue a course which would free her from such an obnoxious intrusion in future. And yet, under it all, there was a glimmering, disturbing little consciousness that he had somehow been in the wrong. It was the first time in his life that he had had occasion to distrust his social methods, and he would not quite own to such a state of mind now. There was, moreover, another feeling at work within his breast, which caused him to determine that he would make some concessions, if necessary, to reinstate himself in this young lady’s regard. It was a thing which he knew he had heretofore enjoyed, and he felt a strong reluctance to giving it up.
Neither were Louis Gaston’s slumbers as serene and tranquil as usual that night. He made some effort to return to his work, but he found it impossible to fix his attention on it, and so retired to bed to wait for the sleep that was so strangely long in coming.