“Allowing Garrassime to stay near him and—forgive me—myself to defray all their joint expenses. It is a matter of pride with me.”
“Of all the ungracious bundles of thorns I have ever encountered—” she commenced, but he would not let her speak.
“Permit me,” he interrupted. “I do not mean to be ungracious—ungrateful—you must know that! I am so deeply touched, on the contrary, by—” His voice altered all of a sudden, and Marguerite felt a lump rise in her throat.
They had reached what is called there an étoile des bois, otherwise a wide grassy spot where five roads meet in a star-shaped clearing, and Basil jerked “The Cid” to a stand.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, still a little hoarsely, “we could dismount and sit down here while Ireland waters the beasts.”
For answer she slipped off “Narses” in her customary unexpected way, and stood by his head, stroking him; the rascal allowing her to rub his velvet nose with carefully disguised contentment.
Ireland having trotted up and assumed charge of the horses—it was one of “Narses’s” peculiarities that he was sometimes approachable by a dismounted well-wisher, and, moreover, he did not hate Ireland a tenth part as much as he did his own grooms and stablemen—Basil and Marguerite were at liberty to seek a comfortable seat on a fallen tree-trunk.
“I wanted to say this to you, but lacked the courage to do so,” he shamefacedly admitted, his expression quite changed. “Also, something else, if you will only have patience.”
As years before on the brink of the Castle cliff at Plenhöel, Marguerite sat quite motionless, her mere profile visible, listening to Basil with eyes fixed on the most distant point they could discern.
“You and your father have been kinder to me than any one else in the world since my mother left me—kind and considerate beyond all expression. Now you want to go further yet and take off my hands a responsibility—a cruel responsibility—in short, one that is almost greater than I can bear!” He paused, and Marguerite, without turning toward him, said, quickly: