Margaret's face flushed.
"Y—es, very," she replied; then she was going on to tell the old lady of her meeting with Lord Blair, but stopped short.
"I think I will go up to bed now," she said, and giving the old lady a kiss, she went up-stairs to her own room. There she thought over every word that the young lord said, and that she herself had spoken. There had been no harm in any of it, surely! He had spoken respectfully, almost reverentially, and even when he had given her the rose he had done it with as much diffidence and high bred courtesy as if she had been a countess. Surely there had been no harm in it.
It was a lovely morning when she woke, and dressing herself she went straight to the picture gallery. As she left the room Lord Blair's red rose seemed to smile at her from the dressing table, and she took it up and carried it in her hand. It was just possible that she might meet him; if so, it would be as well to have the rose with her, for give it back she meant to, if a chance afforded. The light in the gallery could not have been better, and she set to work at first languidly, but presently with more spirit, and was becoming perfectly absorbed, when she heard a voice singing the refrain of the last popular London song.
It was a man's voice, it could be no other than Lord Blair's, and in a minute or two afterward she heard him enter the gallery.
She heard him coming toward her with a quick step, and looking up with his eyes fixed upon her with eager pleasure. He was dressed in the suit of tweeds in which he had looked so picturesque on the morning of the fight, and in his buttonhole he wore a white rose. It drew her eyes toward it, and she knew it at once—it was the finest of the roses she had placed in his room.
"Miss Hale!" he exclaimed, holding out his hand, while his eyes beamed with the frank, glad light of youth when it is pleased. "This is luck! I only strolled in here by mere chance—and—and to think of my finding you here! How early you are! And what a lot you have done!" staring admiringly at the canvas. "I hope you didn't catch cold last night?"
"No, my lord," said Margaret, as coldly as if her voice were frozen.
He looked at her with a quick questioning.
"I'm off almost directly," he said, with something like a sigh. "It's a bore having to go back to London and leave this place a morning like this. I had no idea it was so—so jolly, until——" he stopped; he was going to add: "until last night."