"Then for once you have failed of your object. But let me at least plead that I have sinned in ignorance." And he held out his hand, with a laugh.
NEW STYLE.
He watched her for a moment in silence, wondering curiously whether the faint increase of color in her face was due to his unexpected appearance. When he spoke at last, there was a certain constraint in voice and manner, as though back of his apparent cordiality there lurked sundry misgivings as to the wisdom of his present course, and a sense of irritation at the failure of his own nature to grasp completely the subtile organization of his companion. "Do you always choose such an early hour as this for your daily rambles?" he asked, studying with a half-tender scrutiny the irregular, sensitive face before him.
The girl faltered, and raised her eyes to meet his glance. They were strange, light eyes,—not beautiful, but very rare in their peculiar tint of green-gray glass. They looked straight before them, brilliant and baffling. "Not always," she said, with lingering emphasis, "but very often."
Her voice was clear and sweet, though it lacked the cultivated modulations of other tones he knew and loved. There was something in its cadences that recalled to him the flute-notes of the English white-throat, a melody that attracts only to disappoint. He smiled softly at her transparent reticence, and followed up his question. "Is it because the freshness of the morning tempts you out?" he said. "Or"—dropping his voice with sudden meaning—"is it because you like to be alone?"
She hesitated, as though seeking some form of words that would negatively express what was passing in her mind, yet not give her thoughts too clear a reading. There was a touch both of defiance and of expectation in the quick turn of her head and the gleam of her half-shut eyes. "I rather think it is because I like to be alone," she said, at length.
He bowed slightly, and his face, accustomed to alter its expression with facile ease, assumed a look of well-bred regret, tempered with the faintest tinge of amusement. "Then for once you have failed of your object," he whispered apologetically. "But let me at least plead"—here the amused expression deepened, and a gleam of malice brightened his keen eyes—"let me at least plead that I have sinned in ignorance."
A. R.