“I hate them,” she said, and her face expressed it.

“But you make them.”

“How?  You torment me.”

“How can I explain the magic?  Are you not making one of me now, where I stand?”

“Then, sit.”

“Or kneel?”

“Oh, Percy! do nothing ridiculous.”

Inveterate insight was a characteristic of Major Waring; but he was not the less in Mrs. Lovell’s net.  He knew it to be a charm that she exercised almost unknowingly.  She was simply a sweet instrument for those who could play on it, and therein lay her mighty fascination.  Robert’s blunt advice that he should seize the chance, take her and make her his own, was powerful with him.  He checked the particular appropriating action suggested by Robert.

“I owe you an explanation,” he said.  “Margaret, my friend.”

“You can think of me as a friend, Percy?”

“If I can call you my friend, what would I not call you besides?  I did you a great and shameful wrong when you were younger.  Hush! you did not deserve that.  Judge of yourself as you will; but I know now what my feelings were then.  The sublime executioner was no more than a spiteful man.  You give me your pardon, do you not?  Your hand?”

She had reached her hand to him, but withdrew it quickly.

“Not your hand, Margaret?  But, you must give it to some one.  You will be ruined, if you do not.”

She looked at him with full eyes.  “You know it then?” she said slowly; but the gaze diminished as he went on.

“I know, by what I know of you, that you of all women should owe a direct allegiance.  Come; I will assume privileges.  Are you free?”

“Would you talk to me so, if you thought otherwise?” she asked.

“I think I would,” said Percy.  “A little depends upon the person.  Are you pledged at all to Mr. Edward Blancove?”

“Do you suppose me one to pledge myself?”

“He is doing a base thing.”

“Then, Percy, let an assurance of my knowledge of that be my answer.”

“You do not love the man?”

Despise him, say!”

“Is he aware of it?”

“If clear writing can make him.”

“You have told him as much?”

“To his apprehension, certainly.”

“Further, Margaret, I must speak:—­did he act with your concurrence, or knowledge of it at all, in acting as he has done?”

“Heavens!  Percy, you question me like a husband.”

“It is what I mean to be, if I may.”

The frame of the fair lady quivered as from a blow, and then her eyes rose tenderly.

“I thought you knew me.  This is not possible.”

“You will not be mine?  Why is it not possible?”

“I think I could say, because I respect you too much.”

“Because you find you have not the courage?”

“For what?”