I followed at her side, in a stew at my indiscoverable blundering, my chapeau-de-bras in my hand, and myself like to greet too for sympathy and vexation.
“You must tell me what I have done, Miss Walkinshaw,” I said. “Heaven knows I have few enough friends in this world without losing your good opinion through an offence of whose nature I am entirely ignorant.”
“Go away!” she said, pushing my fingers from the side of her chair, that was now being borne towards the town.
“Indeed, and I shall not, Miss Walkinshaw, asking your pardon for the freedom,” I said, “for here's some monstrous misconception, and I must clear myself, even at the cost of losing your favour for ever.”
She hid her face in her handkerchief and paid no more heed to me. Feeling like a mixture of knave and fool, I continued to walk deliberately by her side all the way into the Rue de la Boucherie. She dismissed the chair and was for going into the house without letting an eye light on young persistency.
“One word, Miss Walkinshaw,” I pleaded. “We are a Scottish man and a Scottish woman, our leelones of all our race at this moment in this street, and it will be hard-hearted of the Scottish woman if she will not give her fellow countryman, that has for her a respect and an affection, a chance to know wherein he may have blundered.”
“Respect and affection,” she said, her profile turned to me, her foot on the steps, visibly hesitating.
“Respect and affection,” I repeated, flushing at my own boldness.
“In spite of Clancarty's tales of me?” she said, biting her nether lip and still manifestly close on tears.
“How?” said I, bewildered. “His lordship gave me no tales that I know of.”