"She has made me the happiest man in all the world," said Blair, almost solemnly.
"At any rate, she is good-natured," said Ambrose. "Most women would have sent me to the right-about——"
"Not Margaret! not Margaret!" broke in Blair. "Wait till you see her and hear her talk, old fellow!"
"Well, I sha'n't have to wait long," he said, as he caught sight of Margaret's dress.
The next moment he stood before her.
Mr. Austin Ambrose was a man who had raised the art of concealing his emotions and his thoughts to a positive science; therefore he neither started nor uttered an exclamation as his eye fell upon Margaret Hale; but a swift and sharp surprise and astonishment went through him like the stab of a dagger.
She had risen at the sound of their footsteps, and stood upright before him in all her beauty, and with all her infinite grace; and instead of the pretty, hoidenish, middle-class young woman he had pictured, Austin Ambrose found himself confronted by a girl who was not only lovely, but refined, and, in short—a lady!
And Margaret? For a moment she was conscious of a feeling of repulsion, of dread, and almost of dislike, but she fought it down, and instead of responding to his respectful and almost reverential inclination with a formal bow, she held out her hand.
"This is very good, very gracious of you, Miss Hale! To accept the acquaintance of a stranger so suddenly——"
"No friend of Lord Blair's must be a stranger to me," she said, with a blush.