“Your good opinion is very precious to me,” Amelius pleaded, bending a little nearer to her. “I can’t tell you how sorry I should be—” He stopped, and put it more strongly. “I shall never have courage enough to enter the house again, if I have made you think meanly of me.”
A woman who cared nothing for him would have easily answered this. The calm heart of Regina began to flutter: something warned her not to trust herself to speak. Little as he suspected it, Amelius had troubled the tranquil temperament of this woman. He had found his way to those secret reserves of tenderness—placid and deep—of which she was hardly conscious herself, until his influence had enlightened her. She was afraid to look up at him; her eyes would have told him the truth. She lifted her long, finely shaped, dusky hand, and offered it to him as the best answer that she could make.
Amelius took it, looked at it, and ventured on his first familiarity with her—he kissed it. She only said, “Don’t!” very faintly.
“The Queen would let me kiss her hand if I went to Court,” Amelius reminded her, with a pleasant inner conviction of his wonderful readiness at finding an excuse.
She smiled in spite of herself. “Would the Queen let you hold it?” she asked, gently releasing her hand, and looking at him as she drew it away. The peace was made without another word of explanation. Amelius took a chair at her side. “I’m quite happy now you have forgiven me,” he said. “You don’t know how I admire you—and how anxious I am to please you, if I only knew how!”
He drew his chair a little nearer; his eyes told her plainly that his language would soon become warmer still, if she gave him the smallest encouragement. This was one reason for changing the subject. But there was another reason, more cogent still. Her first painful sense of having treated him unjustly had ceased to make itself keenly felt; the lower emotions had their opportunity of asserting themselves. Curiosity, irresistible curiosity, took possession of her mind, and urged her to penetrate the mystery of the interview between Amelius and her aunt.
“Will you think me very indiscreet,” she began slyly, “if I made a little confession to you?”
Amelius was only too eager to hear the confession: it would pave the way for something of the same sort on his part.
“I understand my aunt making the heat in the concert-room a pretence for taking you away with her,” Regina proceeded; “but what astonishes me is that she should have admitted you to her confidence after so short an acquaintance. You are still—what shall I say?—you are still a new friend of ours.”
“How long will it be before I become an old friend?” Amelius asked. “I mean,” he added, with artful emphasis, “an old friend of yours?”