As she closed her eyes the hot flush fled from her cheeks, leaving them pale and transparent, and with a pearly shadow cast over them by the drooping fringe of her lashes.
"Mademoiselle Fernande," exclaimed de Maurel, overwhelmed with shame and contrition at his own brutality.
But already Fernande had recovered her self-possession; and even before the first words of abject self-abasement had passed his lips, she uttered a low moan of pain and tottered as if about to fall. She would have fallen--no doubt most gracefully--had not his arm proved to be once more so conveniently near.
"'Twas cruel, _mon cousin_," she murmured feebly, "to speak such words, whilst I am too weak to raise my voice in defence of those I love."
"Mademoiselle Fernande," he said appealingly, "I said just now that I had never given you cause to call me an inhuman wretch. Until a while ago I could have asserted on my soul that I had never been cruel to a woman in my life. Now you see me shamed beyond endurance. Will you believe me when I say that I would give twenty years of my life to unsay the thoughtless words I spoke just now? Mademoiselle Fernande, will you deign to forgive a poor wretch who hath never had a knowledge of soft words, but who would sooner have bitten out his tongue ere he uttered the senseless ones which have so justly angered you?"
Ronnay de Maurel's head was bent, in utter humility and remorse, while he spoke, or he could not have failed to note the look of triumph which shot out of the girl's eyes from beneath her half-closed lids, or the swift sigh of satisfaction which escaped her parted lips.
"We'll call those words unsaid, dear cousin," she said softly. "I know, alas! that between your political aims and our own there is an abyss of divergent ideals! You and your party have the power now--we are humbled and helpless--and must, therefore, rely on your generosity not to embitter the joy which we felt when we trod once again the soil of our beloved country, after years of poverty and of exile."
"Protestations would come ill from me," he murmured. "You would scorn them--and justly, too--after my unwarrantable transgression."
"You will have to be patient with us, _mon cousin_. We may have erred in the past, we may be foolish and misguided now, but you must try and remember always that every one of our actions is guided solely by our love of France--by the burning patriotism which helped us to endure exile and untold misery for the sake of our beliefs and of our aspirations. Mistaken we may be; but until you have heard the advocacy of our cause, I pray you do not judge us as harshly as you have obviously been led to do."