She looked back into the ballroom, and saw Sir Harold Annesley talking to Lady Elaine Seabright. Lady Elaine’s flower-like face was turned up to him laughingly, and Margaret Nugent shivered.
She turned, and gliding from the conservatory, almost reeled into the vine-wreathed piazza beyond, clutching at the wall for support.
Even here she could not be alone, for a recumbent figure started up from a low seat, saying, in anxious tones:
“Dear Miss Margaret, are you faint? I have just come out myself to escape the heat. Can I get you a glass of water?”
“No, thank you, viscount,” replied Margaret. “I am already better—much better. The heat is stifling.”
“Would you prefer to be alone, Miss Margaret?” went on Viscount Rivington, “or will you stroll with me in the moonlight for a few minutes? It is lovely out here, and we shall not be missed now.”
He spoke with a tinge of bitterness in his tones. Margaret looked at him sharply.
“I understand——” she said, gently, yet with a thrill of satisfaction in her heart, “I understand. Lady Elaine is as capricious as usual; Lady Elaine seeks new worlds to conquer!”
He laughed bitterly.
“Sir Harold is the social lion to-night. Every one bows to him,” he said, “but I will not have him come between me and the woman I worship, Miss Nugent!”