"Wait!" she commanded, as they moved up the garden walk. "I want to speak with you about Don Ippolito. What shall I do to him for my rudeness? You _must_ tell me--you _shall_," she said in a fierce whisper, gripping the arm which Ferris had given to help her up the landing-stairs. "You are--older than I am!"
"Thanks. I was afraid you were going to say wiser. I should think your own sense of justice, your own sense of"--
"Decency. Say it, say it!" cried the girl passionately; "it was indecent, indecent--that was it!"
--"would tell you what to do," concluded the painter dryly.
She flung away the arm to which she had been clinging, and ran to where the priest stood with her mother at the foot of the terrace stairs. "Don Ippolito," she cried, "I want to tell you that I am sorry; I want to ask your pardon--how can you ever forgive me?--for what I said."
She instinctively stretched her hand towards him.
"Oh!" said the priest, with an indescribable long, trembling sigh. He caught her hand in his held it tight, and then pressed it for an instant against his breast.
"Now, that's right, Florida," said her mother, as the four stood in the pale, estranging moonlight. "I'm sure Don Ippolito can't cherish any resentment. If he does, he must come in and wash it out with a glass of wine--that's a good old fashion. I want you to have the wine at any rate, Don Ippolito; it'll keep you from taking cold. You really must."
"Thanks, madama; I cannot lose more time, now; I must go home at once. Good night."
Before Mrs. Vervain could frame a protest, or lay hold of him, he bowed and hurried out of the land-gate.
"How perfectly absurd for him to get into the water in that way," she said, looking mechanically in the direction in which he had vanished.
"Well, Mrs. Vervain, it isn't best to be too grateful to people," said Ferris, "but I think we must allow that if we were in any danger, sticking there in the mud, Don Ippolito got us out of it by putting his shoulder to the oar."
"In fact," continued Ferris, "I suppose we may say that, under Providence, we probably owe our lives to Don Ippolito's self-sacrifice and Miss Vervain's knowledge of German. At any rate, it's what I shall always maintain."
"Mother, don't you think you had better go in?" asked Florida, gently. Her gentleness ignored the presence, the existence of Ferris. "I'm afraid you will be sick after all this fatigue."