Page:Hope-indiscretions of duchess.djvu/85

Rh in?” she asked, but rather in bewilderment than anger.

“I was passing on my way upstairs, and—and you seemed to be in distress.”

“Did I make such a noise as that?” said she. “I’m as bad as a child; but children cry because they mustn’t do things, and I because I must.”

We appeared to be going to talk. I shut the door.

“My intrusion is most impertinent,” said I. “You have every right to resent it.”

“Oh, have I the right to resent anything? Did you think so this morning?” she asked impetuously.

“The morning,” I observed, “is a terribly righteous time with me. I must beg your pardon for what I said.”

“You think the same still?” she retorted quickly.

“That is no excuse for having said it,” I returned. “It was not my affair.”

“It is nobody’s affair, I suppose, but mine.”

“Unless you allow it to be,” said I. I could not endure the desolation her words and tone implied.

She looked at me curiously.

“I don’t understand,” she said in a fretfully weary tone, “how you come to be mixed up in it at all.”

“It’s a long story.” Then I went on abruptly: “You thought it was someone else that had entered.”

“Well, if I did?”