She took a chair beside the little blaze in the fireplace.
“Sit down, Peter. I wish to say something to you. I have been wishing to do so for some time.”
“Do you object if I stand a moment?” he said. “I feel so much more comfortable standing, especially when I am going to be scolded.”
“Yes,” she admitted, “I am going to scold you. Your conscience has warned you.”
“On the contrary,” he declared, “it has never been quieter. If I have offended; it is through ignorance.”
“It is through charity, as usual,” she said in a low voice. “If your conscience be quiet, mine is not. It is in myself that I am disappointed—I have been very selfish. I have usurped you. I have known it all along, and I have done very wrong in not relinquishing you before.”
“Who would have shown me Paris?” he exclaimed.
“No,” she continued, “you would not have been alone. If I had needed proof of that fact, I had it to-day—”
“Oh, Minturn,” he interrupted; “think of me hanging about an Embassy and trying not to spill tea!” And he smiled at the image that presented.
Her own smile was fleeting.