Margaret had never been in love. If any one had asked her why not, she would have said that she was too busy, and hadn't time. Young men had admired her, and some few, the artists whom she met now and again, had fallen in love with her, but no one had ever spoken of the great mystery to her, for there was something about Margaret, with all her wildness, an indescribable maiden dignity which kept men silent.
Lord Blair had been the first to speak to her in tones hinting at passion, and it is little wonder that his words clung to her, and utterly refused to be dismissed from her mind, though she tried hard and honestly to forget them; even endeavored to laugh at them, as the wild words of a wild young man, who would probably forget that he had ever spoken them, and forget her, too, an hour or two after he had got to London.
But she could not. She said not a word of what had occurred to old Mrs. Hale, for she felt that she could not have borne the flow of talk, and comment, and rebuke which the old lady would pour out. It would have been better if she had spoken and told her all; a thing divided becomes halved, a thing dwelt upon grows and gets magnified.
Margaret brooded over the wild words Lord Blair had said until every sentence was engraved on her mind; even the expression of his face as he stood before her, defiant as a Greek god, got impressed upon her memory so that she could call it up whenever she pleased, and, indeed, it rose before her when she did not even wish it.
"This is absurd and—and nonsensical!" she exclaimed on the second day after his departure, when she suddenly awoke to the fact that she had been sitting, brush in hand, staring before her and recalling Lord Blair's handsome, dare-devil eyes, as they had looked into hers. "I am behaving like a foolish, sentimental idiot!" she told herself, dabbing some color on her canvas with angry self-reproach. "What on earth can it matter to me what such a person as Viscount Leyton said to me? I shall never see him again, and he has probably forgotten, by this time, that such a person as myself exists! I am an idiot not to be able to forget him as easily. He behaved like a savage to the very last, and I would not speak to him again if—if we were cast alone on a desert island!"
She sprung to her feet with an exclamation of annoyance, and began bundling her painting materials together, and was in the midst of clearing up, when she heard a step behind her, and saw the earl.
It was near the dinner hour, and he was in evening dress, for, though he dined alone, he always assumed the regulation attire; and Margaret, as she looked at him, could not help noticing the vague likeness between him and Lord Blair.
"Do I disturb you?" he said, in his low, grave voice, and he paused with the knightly courtesy for which he was famous.
"No, my lord. I have just finished for to-day," said Margaret, rather shyly, for she felt his greatness, which spoke in the tone of his voice, and proclaimed itself even in his gait, and the way he held himself.
With a slight inclination of his head he came and stood before the canvas.