L'Isle was angry with himself. Not that he felt that he owed Lady Mabel any amends. But he had never until now made the slightest allusion to certain scenes in the past. Pride had forbidden it. And he was still reproaching himself with his want of self-control, when, on entering another room, he saw Lady Mabel seated between two old ladies, having ensconced herself there to get rid of the small _savant_. She no longer looked discomposed or angry, nor did she turn her eyes away on his approach. She almost seemed to wish to speak to him. So he offered his arm, and they walked toward the room he had just left. "I know that you are too proud," she said, "to ask any pardon for the attack you made on me just now. So I wish to tell you that I have already forgiven it." "That is truly generous," said L'Isle, with haughty irony. "You prove the adage false which says, 'The injurer never forgives.'" "Say you so? I see then that you have gone back years to dig up old offences. Although I remember, to repent of them, I trusted that you would have willingly forgiven and forgot my folly, or only recall it to laugh at it. I know now," she said, stealing a look at him, "that you are of an unforgetting, unforgiving temper." Then looking away, she added, "I thought better of you once." "There are some things," answered L'Isle, but in a softened tone, "not to be forgotten, nor easily forgiven." "I assure you," said Lady Mabel, with the air of a penitent, "I have been terribly ashamed of myself ever since. Had I known that you still viewed my thoughtless conduct as a serious wrong to you, I would willingly have made you any apology, any reparation." "Apologies would hardly reach the evil," said L'Isle. "But any reparation! That is a broad term." "Any, I mean, that you ought to ask, or I to make." "There would be no absolute impropriety in my asking a good deal," said L'Isle, in tones that reminded Lady Mabel of some witching moments in Elvas, "I will not make the blunder of asking too little," he added resolutely. "Let me first ask when you will be at home to-morrow--at three?" "Certainly at three; more certainly at two," she answered in a low tone. "And most certainly at one," said he joyously. "I like your superlative degree of comparison." "I only meant," she said, yet more confused, "that I am more likely to be at home alone at two." And turning quickly away, she took a vacant seat beside one of her friends, to whom, while fanning herself, she complained of the heated room. She seemed, indeed, quite overcome by it, which accounted for her labored breathing and heightened color. * * * * * "After all," said Lady Mabel, some days after the morning on which L'Isle found her at home alone, "I was neither so good an actress, nor so great a hypocrite as you took me for. My offence was not so much that I simulated, as that I ceased to dissemble."