“I feel myself to have acted unwarrantably, indeed rudely, in my manner of receiving your cousin. I was angry at the time, and I forgot myself. I have done what little I could to atone for it to Mr. Decourcy, but I felt that I owed you an apology, because in acting thus toward a guest of yours I was guilty of a rudeness to you.”
Margaret was silent; but how she burned to speak!
“Am I forgiven?” said Gaston, after a little pause, for the first time smiling a little, and speaking in the clear, sweet tones that she had lately thought the pleasantest in the world. If she thought so still, she denied it to her own heart.
“I need hardly say, Mr. Gaston,” she answered, forcing back a sigh, “that as far as I am concerned, you have quite atoned for your treatment of my cousin.”
“Then am I reinstated in your favor, great Queen Margaret, and will you give me your royal hand upon it?”
He extended his hand, but Margaret quickly clasped hers with its fellow, and dropped them in front of her, while she slowly shook her head. There was none of the bright naïveté so natural to her, in this action; she looked thoughtful and very grave.
The young man felt his pulses quicken; he resolved that she should make friends with him, cost what it might. It had become of the very first importance to him that he should be reinstated in that place in her regard which he knew that he had once held, and which he now felt to be so priceless a treasure.
“I am still unforgiven, I see,” he said; “but you will at least tell me what is my offence that I may seek to expiate it.”
Margaret raised her candid eyes to his and looked at him a moment with a strange expression; doubt, disappointment and glimmering hope were mingled in it.
“Shall I be frank with you?” she said, speaking from a sudden impulse. “I should like to, if I dared.”