‘I beg your pardon,’ she murmured, ‘there has been no one here so long——’
He had spoken as though her presence was the most natural thing in the world, but neither his composed acceptance of it or his courteous welcome could reconcile her to the position she occupied. She coloured painfully, and her breath came and went in an agitation she could not subdue.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she stammered again; ‘I did not know—last night I did not hear your name—there has been no one here so long. Oh, what can you think of me!’
Her eyes were filled with sudden tears; her colour faded as suddenly as it had come. She was only a child, and had been reared by stern formalities and by chill precepts.
‘Think?’ echoed Othmar; ‘that you are kind enough to treat me as a neighbour. Neighbours are not always friends, but I hope we shall be so. That little gate has no use in it unless it be an open portal for friendship to pass to and fro; I walked through it to Millo last night.’
But his good nature and gentleness could not avail to console her for what was in her own eyes, as it would have been in that of her relatives, an unpardonable and infamous misdemeanour. Now that she recognised in the speaker the same person whom her cousin had presented to her the previous evening, she longed for the lawn she stood on to open and cover her. A piteous dismay took possession of her; would he ever believe that she had not known him as the owner of S. Pharamond? Would he ever believe that S. Pharamond had been that morning, as far as her knowledge had gone, still unoccupied as it had been for ten mortal years?
All the lessons of her convent life made her act appear in her own eyes one of inexcusable audacity, unspeakable horror,—to have come into the gardens of a stranger when he was himself there to take his flowers!
The kindness of his gaze and the cordiality of his welcome could do nothing to console her; she was barely conscious of them; the colour in her face mounted to the loose curls escaping from her little fur cap; she laid her basket down and joined her hands in an unconscious supplication.
‘There has been no one here so long,’ she said yet again with pathetic appeal in her voice. ‘I thought I did no harm; M. Duvelleroy, the head gardener, has always let me come when there is a feast day. Indeed, I have never taken the rare flowers, only those which he did not want. It is the parish church of S. Pharamond, too; I did not know I did wrong—pray do not blame the gardeners.’