She was so absorbed that she did not hear some one who had entered the gallery, and it was not until the some one stood close beside her that she knew of his presence.
With a start she looked up, and for a moment saw nothing but a handsome young man in evening dress.
His beauty—of the manliest type—gave her a pleasant sensation—she was an artist, remember—but the next moment she recognized him.
It was the young man whom she had called a savage; the gentleman who had fought Jem Pyke. Her eyes grew wide and her lips opened, and she sat and stared at him.
As for him, his astonishment equalled and surpassed hers. He had seen her back as he was passing the door of the gallery, and being unable to resist the temptation to ascertain what the face belonging to so graceful a figure was like, he had entered and softly approached her.
Margaret was a beautiful girl, but she was never lovelier than when under the spell which falls upon an artist absorbed in her work.
The clear, oval face grew dreamy, the large eyes softer and mystical, the red lips sweeter with a suggestful tenderness.
It was the loveliness of the face as well as the recognition of it which struck him—Blair Leyton, of all men—dumb and motionless.
They looked into each other's eyes while one could count fifty, then, with an embarrassment quite novel, he spoke.
"I've disturbed you?"