He had made a mistake--very naturally, too--because she was always so reluctant to give her own individual views about anything.

A mistake could be repaired, he thought, without any serious difficulty.
And so the next morning Margaret received some flowers and a note, a very gentlemanly note, expressive of profound regret that anything he could have said, and so forth, and so forth.

And Margaret, whose strong temper sometimes made her act hastily, even when acting rightly, said to herself that she had maltreated the poor little beast, and would see him if he called again.

That was how she expressed it, showing that to some extent Barker had succeeded in producing a feeling of pity in her mind--though it was a very different sort of pity from what he would have wished.

Meanwhile Margaret returned to New York, where she saw her brother-in-law occasionally, and comforted him with the assurance that when his hundred napoleons were at an end, she would take care of him.
And Nicholas, who was a gentleman, like his dead brother, proud and fierce, lived economically in a small hotel, and wrote magazine articles describing the state of his unhappy country.
Then Barker called and was admitted, Miss Skeat being present, and his face expressed a whole volume of apology, while he talked briskly of current topics; and so he gradually regained the footing he had lost.