One late afternoon as she rambled in the park she saw, framed in by trees as in a picture, the figure of a tall, slender, white-haired gentleman walking toward her. She recognized him at once. It was the mysterious stranger, twice met in her childhood. He held his head high. What a head it was! There was an eagle cast of physiognomy, a chill expression in the eyes, a hardness on the lips. He wore a country suit and carried a heavy gold-headed stick; a diamond stud on a jeweled seal caught the light and shone. These little details curiously impressed themselves upon Meg. She stopped, asking herself if this was the master of the house?
The stranger glanced toward her, lifted his hat, and with an old-world salute passed on. Meg determined not to look after him; but she could not resist the temptation, and turning round she saw him ascending the steps of the house. On questioning the housekeeper, Meg found that the picturesque old gentleman was Sir Malcolm Loftdale.
Next morning Meg was standing arranging some flowers in the window of the little room she had chosen for her morning retreat—it looked out on a pleasant side alley of the grounds in the center of which stood a sun dial—when the door suddenly opened, and the gentleman she had seen in the park on the previous evening entered unannounced. He did not advance beyond the threshold, but he closed the door after him and kept one hand on the handle. He did not extend the other in greeting.
At sight of him Meg's heart fluttered, and she acknowledged by a flurried inclination of her head his stately bow.
He was handsomer than she had imagined him to be; but the light of his stern blue eye remained cold, and there was a remoteness in the steady glance that he fixed upon her.
"I beg you, Miss Beecham, to excuse me for not having welcomed you before," he said in a voice of cold courtesy. "I trust you will forgive me for exercising a privilege age is apt freely to indulge near youth—that of following the usual routine of life. I am a solitary, my life is organized for loneliness."
"You have been most kind, sir," muttered Meg, in a tumult of timidity.
"My servants have received strict orders to attend to your comfort. I hope they have been attentive?"
"They have been very attentive," replied Meg.