"That we might be friends,"--he answered, quietly--"But I see plainly that is impossible!"
She was silent. He stood very still,--his eyes wandering involuntarily to the painted beauty of 'Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt,' which he had admired and studied so often for many lonely years, and back again along the dimly lit gallery to that unveiled portrait of the young bride who never came home, the mother of the little proud creature who confronted him with such fairy-like stateliness and pretty assertion of her small self in combat against him, and upon whom his glance finally rested with a lingering sadness and pain. Then he said in a low tone: "Good-night, Miss Vancourt--good-bye!"
At this a cloud of distress swept across her mobile features. "There now!" she said to herself--"He's going away and he'll never come to the Manor any more! I intended to make him quite ashamed of himself- -and he isn't a bit! So like a man! He'd rather die than own himself in the wrong--besides he ISN'T wrong,--oh dear!--he mustn't go away in a huff!"
And with a sudden yielding sweetness and grace of action of which she was quite unconscious, she extended her hands to him-"Oh, no, Mr. Walden!" she said, earnestly--"I am not so angry as all that! Not good-bye!" Hardly knowing what he did, he took her offered hands and held them tenderly in his own.
"Not good-bye!" she said, trembling a little, and flushing rose-red with a certain embarrassment--"I don't really want to quarrel--I don't indeed! We--we were getting on so nicely together--and it is so seldom one CAN get on with a clergyman!"--here she began to laugh--"But you know it was dreadful of you, wasn't it?--at any rate it sounded dreadful--when you said that English ladies never smoked- --"
"Neither they do,"--declared John resolutely, yet smilingly, "Except by way of defiance!"
She glanced up at him,--and the mirthful sparkle in his eyes was reflected in her own.
"You are very obstinate!" she said, as she drew her hands away from his--"But I suppose you really do think smoking is wrong for women?"
His heart was beating, his pulses thrilling under the influence of her touch, her appealing look and sudden change of manner,--but he was not to be moved from his convictions, though all the world should swim round him in a glamour of blue eyes and gold hair.