"Ah, please," she cried, with a gesture of impatience.
"And that I shall always regret the misstep that I took in bringing my cousins here. I did it in the hope that it would make it possible for you to come familiarly to my house and remove all the annoyances from which you had suffered. I made a mistake, it has all gone wrong. As I said before, I don't understand your sex, and it is best, I suppose, that I should give up trying to. Only there are some things that I should think you might express to a woman as you would to a man. I desire to say I am sorry to have given pain and annoyance to you all the time, as I and mine seem to have been the means of doing. I have great cause to feel grateful to you, and nothing can ever change the high esteem in which I hold you."
"Thank you very much," said Missy; "not even the opinion of the ladies of your household?"
Mr. Andrews turned his head away, with a stolid look towards the lead-colored bay.
"I don't suppose anything will be gained by discussing them," he said.
"No, Mr. Andrews, for I don't like them, and you know when women don't like each other they are apt to be unreasonable."
Mr. Andrews was silent, and his silence roused a fire of jealousy in his companion's mind. Why did he not say to her that he despised them, that he saw through them, that he did not think her prejudice against them in the least unreasonable?
"We shall get cold if we stay here any longer I'm afraid," she said, moving slowly forward up the path.
Mr. Andrews walked beside her for a moment without speaking, then he said very deliberately:
"You have given me much pain, at various times, Miss Rothermel, and a heavy disappointment, but nothing can ever alter my regard for you. A man, I suppose, has no right to blame a woman for disliking him; he can only blame her for misleading him—"