HAVING assisted, humbly and admiringly, at Mrs. Gaston’s elaborate dinner-toilet that evening, Margaret followed the gracefully cloaked and hooded figure down the stairs and out to the door-steps, when she said a gay good-bye to her cousin and General Gaston, and turned and entered the house. She had been informed that Louis Gaston also had an engagement, and so she had the not unwelcome prospect of a quiet evening to herself. There were some things that she wanted leisure to think out, calmly and deliberately, and as the drawing-room looked very warm and inviting she turned toward it, and had sunk into her favorite chair before the fire, when she perceived, for the first time, that the library doors were thrown open and that Louis Gaston was sitting there at work. The sight was an irritating one. His very attitude and the set of his firm, strong shoulders, recalled vividly her discomfiture of the previous evening, and roused all the quick indignation she had felt then. She was about to withdraw at once, in the hope that he might not have perceived her entrance, when he turned suddenly, and, seeing her, rose and came forward, his face wearing its pleasantest smile, and his manner at its easiest and friendliest.

“Well, Cousin Margaret,” he said, “and so they’ve left you behind! But I can assure you, you needn’t regret it. The party is an old-fogy affair, which will be long and tedious. There’s some glory to be got out of it, I dare say, but I’ll wager there isn’t much pleasure.”

Margaret heard him deliver himself of these affable observations with intense indignation. “Cousin Margaret” indeed! Did he presume to suppose for an instant, that he could atone for the indignity he had offered her, and the positive pain he had caused her, by a few careless words of flattery and a caressing tone of voice?“I shouldn’t have cared to go with them in the least,” she answered coldly. “I am used to quiet. Cousin Eugenia said you had an engagement.”

“So I have; but that can be postponed, as also, I suppose, may be your meditations,” answered Louis, feeling a keener zest in the accomplishment of this reconciliation with Margaret since he saw it was likely to cost him some pains. “Suppose now you and I run off to the theatre. There’s a pretty little play on the boards, and we’ll take our chances for a seat.”

“Thank you, I don’t care to go out this evening,” responded Margaret, in the same voice.

There was a moment’s silence, which might have lasted longer, but for some symptoms of flight on the part of Miss Trevennon, which the young man saw and determined to thwart.

“I am afraid,” he began, speaking with some hesitation, “that I was so unfortunate as to offend you in some way last night, when your edifying visitor was here——”“Please don’t refer to that episode, unless you mean to apologize for what you did,” Margaret interrupted him, with an inflection of controlled indignation. “Your laughing at him now does not mend matters.”

The young man’s whole expression changed. This was really a little too much.

“Apologize!” he said quickly, a dark frown gathering. “You are under some remarkable delusion, Miss Trevennon, if you think I acknowledge it to be a case for an apology. It was a most presumptuous intrusion, and as such I was compelled to resent it, on your account as well as my own.”

“Don’t let me be considered in the matter, I beg,” said Margaret, with a little touch of scorn. “I wish no such deed as that to be done in my name.”

“May I ask,” said Gaston, in a keen, distinct voice, “whether your championship of this gentleman is due to an admiration and endorsement of his manner and conduct, or to the more comprehensive fact of his being a Southerner? You Southerners are very clannish, I’ve been told.”

Margaret had always held herself to be superior to sectional prejudices, but there was something in his manner, as he said this, that infuriated her.

“We Southerners,” she answered, feeling a thrill of pride in identifying herself with the race that, by his looks and tones, he was so scornfully contemning, “are not only a clannish people, but also a courteous one, and the very last and least of our number is incapable of forgetting the sacred law of hospitality to a guest.”

Undoubtedly Miss Trevennon had forgotten herself, but it was only for a moment. She had said more than she meant to say, and she checked herself with an effort, and added hastily:

“I much prefer not to pursue this subject, Mr. Gaston. We will drop it just here, if you please.”

The fact that Mr. Gaston bowed calmly, and quietly returned to his work, by no means proved that he was in reality either calm or quiet. It was only by a great effort of self-control that he forced himself to be silent, for both the words and tones that this young lady had used were stingingly provoking. But what affected him most was the stunning presumptuousness of the whole thing. That this ignorant Southern girl, who had passed most of her life in a little insulated village, should venture to set him right on a point which affected his bearing as a man of the world, was infuriating. He mentally assured himself that his conduct toward the fellow, King, had been exactly what it should have been, and, moreover, he determined to take occasion to show Miss Trevennon that he neither regretted nor desired to apologize for it. He felt eager for an opportunity to do this, and all his accustomed prejudices and habits of mind grew deeper and stronger.

For a few moments longer they kept their places in perfect silence, Margaret in her seat before the fire and Gaston at the writing-table, when suddenly the door-bell rang. Neither moved nor spoke, and a few minutes later Thomas announced a gentleman to see Miss Trevennon.

“Alan Decourcy!” exclaimed Margaret, springing to her feet, in excited surprise, as the gentleman approached. “Why, Alan, this is unexpected!”

Mr. Decourcy came nearer, and taking both her hands in his, pressed them cordially.

“It would be ungrateful of me not to recognize my cousin Margaret, in this tall young lady,” he said, looking at her with obvious admiration in his calm, gray eyes, “and yet it is only by an effort that I can do so.”

At this instant Margaret remembered Louis, whom, in the confusion of this meeting, she had quite forgotten. She turned toward him, naming the two men to each other, and to her consternation she saw that he had risen, and was standing erect, with exactly the same repellant expression and attitude which he had assumed in greeting Major King the evening before. With the same frigid manner he acknowledged the present introduction, and after that little icy bow, he seated himself at his writing and turned his back, as before.

Mr. Decourcy, meantime, had taken a chair, from which Mr. Gaston’s attitude was perfectly evident to him, but he showed quite as little concern thereat as Major King had done. And yet what a different thing was this form of self-possession! Mr. Decourcy’s low-toned sentences were uttered with a polished accent that told, as plainly as all the words in the dictionary could have done, that he was a man of finished good-breeding. He treated Margaret with an affectionate deference that she could not fail to find extremely pleasing; inquired for Mr. and Mrs. Trevennon, and said he was determined to go down to see the old home and friends before the winter was over; told Margaret he was glad she had verified his predictions by growing tall and straight; asked if they still called her Daisy at home, and whether it would be accounted presumptuous for him to do so; said very little indeed of himself and his travels, and at the end of about fifteen minutes rose to take leave.

Margaret quietly replied to all his questions, and when he held out his hand to say good-bye, she made no motion to detain him, by word or sign.

“I am going back to Baltimore in a day or two,” he said, “and shall hardly see you again, but I hope you will allow me to arrange for a visit from you to my sister, to take place very soon. When she writes to you on the subject, as she will do at once, do let her find you willing to co-operate with her.”

While Margaret was uttering a hearty assent to this plan, Louis Gaston, who had, of course, heard all that had passed, was rapidly casting about in his mind as to how he should rescue himself from an odious position. There was now no more time to deliberate. He must act; and accordingly he came forward, with a return to his usual manner, which Margaret had once thought so good, and said frankly:

“I happened to have an important bit of work on hand, Mr. Decourcy, which it was necessary for me to finish in haste. I have been obliged, therefore, to forego the pleasure of making your acquaintance, but I hope you will give me your address that I may call upon you.”

“Thank you, I am at the Arlington for a day or two,” responded Decourcy, with his polished politeness of tone and manner, in which Margaret felt such a pride at the moment.

“It is quite early,” Louis went on, “and my brother and sister have deserted Miss Trevennon for a dinner. Will you not remain and spend the evening with her?”

Alan Decourcy possessed to perfection the manner which George Eliot describes as “that controlled self-consciousness which is the expensive substitute for simplicity,” and it was apparently with the most perfect naturalness that he pleaded another engagement and took leave, with compliments and regards to General and Mrs. Gaston. The price this young man had paid for this manner was some years of studious observance of what he considered the best models at home and abroad, and his efforts had been eminently successful. It imposed upon Margaret completely, and charming though she saw her cousin to be, she would have said that his manners were as unstudied as a child’s.

Louis Gaston, on his part, considered the matter more understandingly. He recognized in this cousin of Miss Trevennon a polished man of the world. The type was familiar enough to him, but he knew that this was an exquisite specimen of it, and the very fineness of Mr. Decourcy’s breeding made his own recent bearing seem more monstrously at fault. He felt very anxious to set himself right with Miss Trevennon at once, but almost before he had time to consider the means of doing this she had said good-night and gone up stairs.He stood where she had left him, abstracted and ill at ease. What a power this girl had of making him feel uncomfortable; for it was not Decourcy’s censure and disapprobation that he deprecated half so much as Margaret’s. Again there came into his breast that new, strange feeling of self-distrust. He shook it off with a sigh, tired of self-communing and reflection, and anxious to act. He felt his present position unendurable.

Accordingly, he rang for Thomas and sent him to ask Miss Trevennon if he could speak to her for a few minutes. Thomas carried the message, and presently returned to say that Miss Trevennon would come down.

When she entered the room, soon after, she looked so stately, and met his eyes with such a cold glance, that a less determined man might have faltered. He was very much in earnest, however, and so he said at once:

“I ventured to trouble you to return, Miss Trevennon, in order that I might apologize to you for what I acknowledge to have been an act of rudeness. I am exceedingly sorry for it, and I ask your pardon.”

“You have it, of course, Mr. Gaston. An offence acknowledged and regretted is necessarily forgiven. I want you to tell me explicitly, however, what act you refer to.”

“I feel myself to have acted unwarrantably, indeed rudely, in my manner of receiving your cousin. I was angry at the time, and I forgot myself. I have done what little I could to atone for it to Mr. Decourcy, but I felt that I owed you an apology, because in acting thus toward a guest of yours I was guilty of a rudeness to you.”

Margaret was silent; but how she burned to speak!

“Am I forgiven?” said Gaston, after a little pause, for the first time smiling a little, and speaking in the clear, sweet tones that she had lately thought the pleasantest in the world. If she thought so still, she denied it to her own heart.

“I need hardly say, Mr. Gaston,” she answered, forcing back a sigh, “that as far as I am concerned, you have quite atoned for your treatment of my cousin.”

“Then am I reinstated in your favor, great Queen Margaret, and will you give me your royal hand upon it?”

He extended his hand, but Margaret quickly clasped hers with its fellow, and dropped them in front of her, while she slowly shook her head. There was none of the bright naÏvetÉ so natural to her, in this action; she looked thoughtful and very grave.

The young man felt his pulses quicken; he resolved that she should make friends with him, cost what it might. It had become of the very first importance to him that he should be reinstated in that place in her regard which he knew that he had once held, and which he now felt to be so priceless a treasure.

“I am still unforgiven, I see,” he said; “but you will at least tell me what is my offence that I may seek to expiate it.”

Margaret raised her candid eyes to his and looked at him a moment with a strange expression; doubt, disappointment and glimmering hope were mingled in it.

“Shall I be frank with you?” she said, speaking from a sudden impulse. “I should like to, if I dared.”

“I shall be distressed if you are not,” he said, almost eagerly. “I beg you to say freely what you have in your mind.”

She did not speak at once, but sank into a chair, with a long-drawn respiration that might mean either sadness or relief. When Gaston had brought another chair and placed it close beside her and seated himself, she looked up and met his gaze. In the eyes of both there was the eagerness of youth—in the girl’s a hesitating wistfulness, in the man’s a subdued fire, somewhat strange to them. He was conscious of being deeply stirred, and if he had spoken first his words would probably have betrayed this, but it was Margaret who broke the silence, in tones that were calm and steady, and a little sad.“Mr. Gaston,” she said, turning her eyes away from his face and looking into the fire, “it wouldn’t be worth while, I think, for me to pretend to feel the same toward you, after what has happened; it would be only pretence. Twenty-four hours ago I should have said you were the young man of all my acquaintance whom I felt to be the truest gentleman. I would not say this to your face now, except that it is quite passed.”

“I am glad that you have said it—most glad that it was ever so,” he said, with a hurried ardor; “but it is a great height to fall from. And have I indeed fallen?”

“Yes,” replied Margaret, not smiling at all, but speaking very gravely. “You began to fall the moment Major King came into this room last night, and you have been falling ever since, as I have gone over it all in my mind. You reached the bottom when my cousin came in this evening, and the shock was so great that it caused a slight rebound; but I don’t suppose that signifies much.”If the girl’s eyes had not been fixed upon the fire she would probably have checked her speech at the sight of the expression which settled upon her companion’s face the moment Major King’s name was mentioned. But she did not see it, and was therefore unprepared for the hard, cold tone in which his next words were uttered.

“I have felt and acknowledged my fault, where your cousin was concerned,” he said. “Mr. Decourcy is a gentleman, and nothing but the fact of my being preoccupied with the resentment I felt at certain words of yours at the time, would have caused me to act toward him as I did. This explains, but does not justify my conduct, which I have acknowledged to be unjustifiable. But in the other case, Miss Trevennon, I must maintain that I acted rightly.”

“If that is your feeling about it,” Margaret said, “I think this conversation had better end here.”

“Why, Miss Trevennon?” he asked, a little defiantly. “I see no reason why it should.”

“Because its object, as I suppose, has been to bring about an understanding between us; and since you have defined your sentiments, it is clear to me that we could no more come to understand each other than if you spoke Sanscrit and I spoke French.”

“I believe you are mistaken,” he said. “I have a feeling that our positions are not so widely different as they may appear to be. Don’t refuse to listen to me, Miss Trevennon; that would be unjust, and you are not an unjust woman.”

It was a wonderful proof of the hold she had laid upon him that he took such trouble to exonerate himself in her eyes, and he felt it so himself, but he no longer denied the fact that Miss Trevennon’s good opinion was a matter of vast importance to him. The little impulses of anger which her severe words now and then called forth, were always short lived. One glance at the lovely face and figure near him was generally enough to banish them, and now, as he treated himself to a long look at the fair countenance, with its sweet downcast eyes and slightly saddened mouth, the impossibility of quarrelling with this exquisite creature presented itself so strongly, that he grew suddenly so friendly and at ease, that he was able to assume a tone that was pleasant, and almost gay, as he said:

“Now, Miss Trevennon, honor bright! You know perfectly well that you don’t like that man one bit better than I do.”

“I don’t like him at all. I yield that point at once, but I fail to see how that affects the matter. Children and savages regulate their manners according to their tastes and fancies, but I had always supposed that well-bred men and women had a habit of good-breeding that outside objects could not affect.”

“A gentleman’s house is his castle, Miss Trevennon,” said Gaston, with a return to his former tone and manner; “and it is one of the plainest and most sacred of his duties to see that the ladies of his household are protected from all improper contact. In my brother’s absence I stood in the position of the gentleman of the house, and I did right to adopt a line of conduct which would save you from a like intrusion in future. I owed it to you to do so.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Margaret, waving her hand with a pretty little motion of scornful rejection. “You allowed your consideration for me to constrain you too far. I have led a free, unrestricted life, and am accustomed to contact with those who come and go. No man has a finer feeling as to what is fitting for the ladies of his family than my father, but though I should live to reach old age, I shall never see him pay so great a price for my immunity from doubtful association as an act of rudeness to any one whomsoever.”

“I’ll tell you what it is, Miss Trevennon,” said Gaston, speaking rather warmly, “if you lived in Washington, you would see things differently. There’s no end to the pushing impertinence of the people who hang about a city—this one especially, and a gentleman does not like to have his friends in danger of meeting these obnoxious creatures at his house. It looks very queer, and people think so, too.”

“Is a gentleman’s position, then, so easily impeached? Now I should have thought that, with your name and prestige, you might weather a good many queer appearances. An annoyance of this sort would not be likely to happen often. That it is an annoyance, I do not deny; but I think there must be a better way of preventing such things than the one you adopted. And oh, Mr. Gaston, while we are on this subject, I wonder how you can ignore one point, the agony that you caused me!”

“That I caused you, Miss Trevennon? It is hard, indeed, to lay at my door the discomfiture you endured last evening.”

“I think it was the most wretched evening I ever passed,” said Margaret, “and it was only your conduct that made it so.”

“My conduct? Now you are unjust!”“Not at all,” said Margaret. “I am not so wholly uninured to the necessity of sometimes hearing annoyances, as to be made miserable by having to talk for several hours with a man I do not like. You will never believe it, of course, but I do not think Major King is a man who lacks good feeling, the essence and soul of politeness. He belongs to a type that I know very well. He is an ignorant man and a very self-opinionated one, and he has been so long in need of association with his superiors that he has begun to think that he has none. He does not know the world, and is therefore unaware of the fact, that a man who holds the position of a gentleman may be guilty of many lapses without losing that position. I spoke just now of its being rather a light tenure, but, in some ways, it is very strong, it seems. I have said I do not like Major King, but I believe it is a mistake to call him vulgar. He is foolish and conceited, because he has had very slender opportunities to learn better. But oh, Mr. Gaston, how different with you! It is impossible not to draw the contrast. You know the world. You have studied and travelled. You are clever, cultivated and accomplished, and to what end? It has all resulted in an act which yesterday I would have wagered my right hand you were incapable of.”

She spoke with real feeling in her voice, and Gaston caught this inflection, and the sound of it quickened his blood. His ideas and emotions were strangely confused. He felt that he ought to be angry and resentful, but he was conscious only of being contrite.

“I have said too much. I have spoken far too freely,” said Margaret, breaking in upon his reflections. “I meant to be quite silent, but when you urged me to speak I forgot myself. I am sorry.”

“Don’t be,” the young man answered gently; “the fact that these are your opinions entitles them at least to my respect. But there is one thing I must mention before we drop this subject. I cannot be satisfied to allow you to retain the idea that I was accountable for the discomfiture you endured yesterday evening. You must know that I would joyfully shield you from all vexations and annoyances.”

“No,” said Margaret gently, shaking her head; “it was you, and not Major King, who made those hours so wretched to me. You made no effort to conceal the fact that you were outraged and indignant, and what could be clearer than that I had been the means of bringing this deeply resented annoyance upon you? If you had thought of me, you must have seen that.”

“I thought of you continually. It was chiefly upon your account that I resented the intrusion. It matters little to a man whom he happens to rub against, but it pains me deeply that a lady—that you should not be screened from such intercourse.”

In spite of herself, Margaret was touched by this. A hundred times, since she had known him, she had seen Louis Gaston give evidence of an exquisite feeling of deference to women, and she could readily believe that he had been influenced on this occasion partly by consideration for herself; and while she resented the means used she did justice to the motive.

“It is much better that we have talked of this,” she said presently. “I do thank you for having that feeling about me. You could not know it was not needed. I will try to forget it all.”

“But you will not succeed,” he said; “your tone convinces me of that. I wish we understood each other better, Miss Trevennon, and I do not yet give up the hope that in time we may.”

He drew out his watch and looked at it, saying in tones that showed him to be in a serious mood:

“I have an appointment to see a man on business, and I must go and keep it. I shall probably be late coming in, and shall hardly see you again, so I’ll say good-night.”

As he spoke, he turned and went into the hall, and a moment later Margaret heard the front door close behind him.

As she slowly mounted the stairs to her room, she remembered that he had not asked her again to shake hands with him, in token of a re-establishment of the old relationship between them, and, on the whole, she did not regret it. It was as well that he should know that he was not restored to his former place in her regard. Her faith in him had been terribly shaken, and it seemed impossible he could ever be to her again the man she had once thought him.