"Richard" began to be "himself again." The ludicrous side of the case dawned upon him. "I have made a tremendous faux pas, certainly, and now I must get out of it the best way I can," he thought, grimly. Leonora's sharp little tongue had grown still now, and her face was again hidden in her hands. He went up to her and touched her black sleeve lightly. "Oh, come now," he said; "if you go on like this I shall think I made a very apposite mistake. Who but a baby would make such a declaration as yours in the face of the circumstances? Of course you are going to Europe with me!" "I am not," she cried, with a mutinous pout of the rich red lips. "Yes, you are," he replied, coolly. "You have no business to get angry with me because I made a slight mistake about your age. And after all, I remember now that it was really De Vere's mistake, and not mine." "Who is De Vere?" inquired Leonora, curiously, as she glanced up at him through her wet lashes, and showing the rims of her eyes very pink indeed from the resentful tears she had shed. "De Vere is my friend and traveling-companion," he replied. "And does he, too, consider me a bore and a nuisance?" "Well," confidingly, "to tell you the truth, we both[Pg 34] did—that is, you know, while we were laboring under the very natural mistake that you were a very small baby instead of—a grown-up one. But all that is altered now, of course, since I have met you, Miss West. We shall be only too happy to have you for our compagnon du voyage." [Pg 34] He was speaking to her quite as if she were his equal, and not the lowly born niece of the housekeeper at his ancestral home. It was impossible to keep that fact in his head. She was so fair, so refined, so well-bred, in spite of the little flashes of spirit indicative of a spoiled child. She did not answer, and he continued, pleasantly: "I am very sorry for the mistake on my part that caused you so much annoyance. I desire to offer you every possible apology for it." She looked up at him quickly. "Oh, I wasn't mad because you thought Leonora West was a baby," she said.
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