“I happened to have an important bit of work on hand, Mr. Decourcy, which it was necessary for me to finish in haste. I have been obliged, therefore, to forego the pleasure of making your acquaintance, but I hope you will give me your address that I may call upon you.”
“Thank you, I am at the Arlington for a day or two,” responded Decourcy, with his polished politeness of tone and manner, in which Margaret felt such a pride at the moment.
“It is quite early,” Louis went on, “and my brother and sister have deserted Miss Trevennon for a dinner. Will you not remain and spend the evening with her?”
Alan Decourcy possessed to perfection the manner which George Eliot describes as “that controlled self-consciousness which is the expensive substitute for simplicity,” and it was apparently with the most perfect naturalness that he pleaded another engagement and took leave, with compliments and regards to General and Mrs. Gaston. The price this young man had paid for this manner was some years of studious observance of what he considered the best models at home and abroad, and his efforts had been eminently successful. It imposed upon Margaret completely, and charming though she saw her cousin to be, she would have said that his manners were as unstudied as a child’s.
Louis Gaston, on his part, considered the matter more understandingly. He recognized in this cousin of Miss Trevennon a polished man of the world. The type was familiar enough to him, but he knew that this was an exquisite specimen of it, and the very fineness of Mr. Decourcy’s breeding made his own recent bearing seem more monstrously at fault. He felt very anxious to set himself right with Miss Trevennon at once, but almost before he had time to consider the means of doing this she had said good-night and gone up stairs.
He stood where she had left him, abstracted and ill at ease. What a power this girl had of making him feel uncomfortable; for it was not Decourcy’s censure and disapprobation that he deprecated half so much as Margaret’s. Again there came into his breast that new, strange feeling of self-distrust. He shook it off with a sigh, tired of self-communing and reflection, and anxious to act. He felt his present position unendurable.
Accordingly, he rang for Thomas and sent him to ask Miss Trevennon if he could speak to her for a few minutes. Thomas carried the message, and presently returned to say that Miss Trevennon would come down.
When she entered the room, soon after, she looked so stately, and met his eyes with such a cold glance, that a less determined man might have faltered. He was very much in earnest, however, and so he said at once:
“I ventured to trouble you to return, Miss Trevennon, in order that I might apologize to you for what I acknowledge to have been an act of rudeness. I am exceedingly sorry for it, and I ask your pardon.”
“You have it, of course, Mr. Gaston. An offence acknowledged and regretted is necessarily forgiven. I want you to tell me explicitly, however, what act you refer to.”