Ste. Marie gave a little embarrassed laugh.
"I'm sorry," said he, "but I'm afraid they were too personal. I'm afraid if I told you you'd get up and go away and be frigidly polite to me when next we passed each other in the garden here. But there's no harm," he said, "in telling you one thing that occurred to me. It occurred to me that, as far as a young girl can be said to resemble an elderly woman, you bear a most remarkable resemblance to a very dear old friend of mine who lives near Dublin--Lady Margaret Craith. She's a widow, and almost all of her family are dead, I believe--I didn't know any of them--and she lives there in a huge old house with a park, quite alone with her army of servants. I go to see her whenever I'm in Ireland, because she is one of the sweetest souls I have ever known."
He became aware suddenly that Mlle. O'Hara's head was bent very low over her sewing and that her face, or as much of it as he could see, was crimson.
"Oh, I--I beg your pardon!" cried Ste. Marie. "I've done something dreadful. I don't know what it is, but I'm very, very sorry. Please forgive me if you can!"
"It is nothing," she said, in a low voice, and after a moment she looked up for the swiftest possible glance and down again. "That is my--aunt," she said. "Only--please let us talk about something else! Of course you couldn't possibly have known."
"No," said Ste. Marie, gravely. "No, of course. You are very good to forgive me."
He was silent a little while, for what the girl had told him surprised him very much indeed, and touched him, too. He remembered again the remark of his friend when O'Hara had passed them on the boulevard:
"There goes some of the best blood that ever came out of Ireland. See what it has fallen to!"
"It is a curious fact," said he, "that you and I are very close compatriots in the matter of blood--if 'compatriots' is the word. You are Irish and Spanish. My mother was Irish and my people were Béarnais, which is about as much Spanish as French; and, indeed, there was a great deal of blood from across the mountains in them, for they often married Spanish wives."
He pulled the Bayard out of his pocket.