He bowed in his usual awkward style and made as if to go, but with a word Fernande called him back. For a moment or two he hesitated. No doubt he, too, had as great a desire to run away as she had; but the girl now--with one of those contradictory impulses which are peculiar to sensitive temperaments--felt an unconquerable wish to speak with him ... if only for the purpose of challenging him to those words of reproach which he had spared her on that day when Laurent's cruel scorn and her own callousness had struck him as with a physical blow. "M. de Maurel," she cried, moved by that sudden impulse. "At your commands, Mademoiselle," he replied. "I ... I ... believe me I had no thought of meeting you here ... or of intruding upon your privacy ... but now that we have met, I beg of you that you will let me tell you...." She paused, feeling that a hot flush had risen to her cheeks and that her words sounded both halting and cold. And yet he had made no movement to stop her. It had never been his way to interrupt. For good or ill, he always listened to the end of whatever anyone chose to say. He had listened to the end, when Laurent, with a few harsh words, had shattered the shrine wherein he had set his fondest illusions; he stood quite still now, ready to listen to everything she might wish to say. But somehow it was just his attitude of quiet expectancy which stemmed the flow of her words. It was only when she had been silent for some few seconds and apparently was not going to speak again, that he interposed calmly: "Is there any necessity for you, Mademoiselle, to tell me anything? Surely not, seeing that it distresses you. Will you, on the other hand, permit me to offer you my well-meant congratulations on your approaching marriage with my brother?" Already Fernande had recovered some measure of self-control. Her dignity was on the qui vive. Apparently he meant to meet every advance on her part with frigid enmity. The look of resentment in his eyes had deepened, and to Fernande's keen senses it seemed as if they held no small measure of scorn as well. "I thank you," she said coolly. "It was _ma tante's_ intention to send you an announcement of our _fiancailles_, but we only heard yesterday with any certainty that you had returned." "There is no occasion for my mother to trouble herself about such trifling conventions with me," he retorted. "I feel so sure that she hath no desire to claim the slightest kinship with a de Maurel that any formalities of the kind which she seems to contemplate would be a mere farce." "You are very irreconcilable, M. de Maurel," said Fernande coldly, "and are making your mother and Laurent suffer for the thoughtlessness which I committed a year ago, and of which I would like you to believe that I have since bitterly repented." "I have no recollection of any thoughtlessness on your part, Mademoiselle ... certainly of none which should cause you any regret."