CHAPTER VIII.

I Find that I Care.

For a moment I stood stock still, wishing to Heaven that I had not opened the door; for I could find now no excuse for my intrusion, and no reason why I should not have minded my own business.  The impulse that had made the thing done was exhausted in the doing of it.  Retreat became my sole object; and, drawing back, I pulled the door after me.  But I had given Fortune a handle—­very literally; for the handle of the door grated loud as I turned it.  Despairing of escape, I stood still.  Marie Delhasse looked up with a start.

“Who’s there?” she cried in frightened tones, hastily pressing her handkerchief to her eyes.

There was no help for it.  I stepped inside, saying: 

“I’m ashamed to say that I am.”

I deserved and expected an outburst of indignation.  My surprise was great when she sank against the back of the chair with a sigh of relief.  I lingered awkwardly just inside the threshold.

“What do you want?  Why did you come 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?”

“Someone returning,” said I stepping up to the table opposite her.

“What then?” she asked, but wearily and not in the defiant manner of the morning.

“Mme. Delhasse perhaps, or perhaps the Duke of Saint-Maclou?”

Marie Delhasse made no answer.  She sat with her elbows on the table, and her chin resting on the support of her clenched hands; her lids drooped over her eyes; and I could not see the expression of her glance, which was, nevertheless, upon me.

“Well, well,” I continued, “we needn’t talk about him.  Have you been doing some shopping?” And I pointed to the red leathern box.