"Oh, don't destroy my pleasure by explaining that you did not mean them for me!" he pleaded. "You put them there at any rate. Will you let me, in return, fix this rose in your shawl? We shall be more than quits then on my side!"
Oh, Margaret, put back the proffered flower! Red stands in the language of magic for all that is evil, for a passion that will burn into ashes of pain; put back the hand that offers it to you!
But he was too quick. Gently, reverently he fixed the rose in the meshes of the antimacassar, and, as he put it straight with a caressing touch, he murmured:
"Good-night! Try and remember me, Miss—Margaret, at any rate as long as the rose lives!"
Red as the flower itself, trembling with a feeling that was painfully like the stab of conscience, Margaret glanced up at him, and without a word, sped from his side.
Lord Leyton stood looking after her, as strange an expression in his face as her own had worn.
Then with a long sigh he went back to the seat and threw himself down into it, in the place where she had sat.
Half an hour passed; the nightingale for which Margaret had been waiting came out and sang for him; but the song gave him no delight, for in his whirling brain its notes seemed to take the shape of words: words of such sad, strange import! "Spare her!—spare her!" the bird seemed to sing; and as if he could not endure the appeal any longer, he rose impatiently and walked toward the terrace.
As he did so, a tall, skulking figure moved snake-like after him.
Lord Blair stopped at the bottom of the steps, and the shadow pursuing him stopped also, and raised a heavy stick.