His voice stopped her.
"Are you fond of pictures?" he asked, as one of his age and attainments would ask a child.
"Yes," said Margaret, simply, refraining even from adding, "very."
His glance grew absent.
"Most of your sex are," he said, musingly. "All life is but a picture to most of them. The surface, the surface only"—he sighed very faintly and wearily, and was pacing on, to Margaret's immense relief, as if he had forgotten her, when he stopped, as if moved by a kindly impulse, and said: "Pray come here when you please. The pictures will be glad of your company; they spend a solitary life too often. Yes, come when you please."
"Thank you, my lord," said Margaret, quietly, and without any fuss.
Perhaps the reserved and quiet response attracted his attention.
"Which was the picture I saw you admiring when I came in?" he asked. "You were admiring it, I think?"
"It was the head by Guido, my lord," she answered.
He looked at her quickly.