Colburne was astonished, disarmed, ashamed, notwithstanding that he had been in the right and was the injured party.
"Mrs. Larue, I beg your pardon," he answered. "I have been unnecessarily excited. I sincerely ask you pardon."
She accorded it in pleasant words and with the most amiable of smiles. She was a good-natured, graceful little grimalkin, she could be pretty and festive over a mouse while torturing it; so purring and velvet-pawed, indeed, that the mouse himself could not believe her to be in earnest, and prayed to be excused for turning upon her. It is probable that, not being susceptible to keen emotions, she did not know what deep pain she had given the young man by her attack. The advantage which blasé people have over innocents in a fight is awful. They know how to hit, and they don't mind the punishing. It is said that Deaf Burke's physiognomy was so calloused by frequent poundings that he would permit any man to give him a facer for a shilling a crack.
Lillie said almost nothing during the conversation, being quite overcome with amazement and anger at Colburne's degradation and at the wrongheadedness, the indelicacy, the fanaticism with which he defended it. When the erring young man left the house she did not give him her hand, after her usual friendly southern fashion. The pride of race, the prejudices of her education, would not permit her to be cordial, at least not in the first moments of offence, with one who felt himself at liberty to go from her parlor to that of an octoroon. How could a Miss Ravenel put herself on a level with a Miss Meurice.
"Oh, these abolitionists! these negar worshippers!" laughed Mrs. Larue, when the social heretic had taken himself away. "Are they not horrible, these New England isms? He will be joining the voodoos next. I foresee that you will have rivals, Mees Lillie. I fear that Mademoiselle Meurice will carry the day. You are under the disadvantage of being white. Et puis tu n'est pas descendue d'une race bâtarde. Quel malheur! Je ne dirais rien s'il entretenait son octaronne a lui. Voilà qui est permis, bien que ce n'est pas joli."
"Mrs. Larue, I wish you wouldn't talk to me in that way;--I don't like to hear it," said Lillie, in high anger.