“Oh, Miss Clinton, do but assure me, solemnly, that I aspersed you unjustly in my words, and in my thoughts. You will, indeed, relieve a heavy burden from my heart.”
“Sir!” said Lotte, her voice once more trembling, “I have a sense of self-respect too acute to do anything of the kind. You know but little of me; I therefore forgive your harsh and unwarranted impressions, but I cannot, and will not, stoop to defend a fair name which never yet has deserved reproach.”
There was a proud nobleness in her mien, a clear unwavering expression of her eye, and as she concluded an unfaltering tone in her words which instantly carried conviction to Mark’s heart.
“Miss Clinton,” he responded, with considerable earnestness, “I believe you—from my soul I believe you. I do not know how sufficiently to reproach myself, or how urgently enough to plead to you to pardon my ungenerous and ignoble conduct to you when last we met. Upon my knees I will implore you to forgive me, for I now feel keenly how wantonly I insulted you, how inhumanly I wronged you.”
Lotte, with a beaming face, held out her hand.
“You did in truth wrong me,” she said, with a sweet smile, “but the best of us at times form erroneous impressions. Let us no more remember what has passed and never speak of it again.”
He took her hand and pressed it to his heart and, though she struggled a little to withdraw it, to his lips, and imprinted a passionate kiss upon it.
“Dear Miss Clinton,” he said, when he released her hand, “we must speak of it again, for at least I must offer an explanation of the cause of my behaviour, or else appear in your eyes little better than an incomprehensible madman.”
“No—oh, no!” laughed Lotte: “indeed, I am satisfied that you were troubled with some strange hallucination then, which has disappeared now, and I am quite content.”
“But I am not!” he said gravely.