It was a ridiculous position to be placed in, and an annoying one, for she felt that her grandmother would be vexed by Margaret's venturing out of their own apartments.
But she did not know what to do; it was impossible, having turned round in the circular lobby and lost count of the door, to regain it again, and in a semi-comic despair, she opened the door opposite her, intending to walk on until she met a servant of whom she could ask her way back to Mrs. Hale's wing.
She found herself presently and quite suddenly in a short corridor, at the end of which a stream of varicolored light poured from a stained window; there was the reflection also of gilt carving and velvet hangings, and rather awed, Margaret was for turning back, when she saw a footman pass with noiseless footsteps across the thick Oriental carpet at the end of the corridor.
She called to him, and hurried after him, but before she could reach him he had disappeared as if by magic, evidently without hearing her suppressed voice, and she found herself standing at the entrance to a magnificent picture gallery, which seemed to run an interminable length and lose itself in a distant vista of ferns and statuary.
Margaret literally held her breath as she peered in through the velvet curtains.
There, line upon line, hung what was no doubt one of the collections of the kingdom—and she within the threshold of it.
Her mouth, metaphorically, began to water; her large dark eyes grew humid with wistfulness.
What cream is to a cat, water to a duck, pate de foie gras to a gourmet, an Elziver to a bookworm, that is a picture gallery to an artist.
She could resist the temptation no longer. The place was crowned, as it were, with silence and solitude: no one would see her or know that she had been there, and she would only stay five—ten minutes.