Then she looked in the direction whence the voice proceeded—a gentleman was reclining on a rock by the waterfall. He had been reading, for an open book lay by his side; but Hyacinth strongly suspected, from the quiet smile on his lips and in his luminous eyes, that he had been watching her.
"I am afraid I startled you," he continued; "but the water is not so clear as it looks."
"Thank you," she returned, gently.
He took up his book again, and she turned to leave the grove. But in those few moments, the world had all changed for her. She walked out of the vine grove, and sat down by the edge of the lake, trying to live every second of those few minutes over again.
What was that face like? Dark, beautiful, noble—the face of a king, with royal brows, and firm, grave, yet sweet lips—a face that in her girlish dreams she would have given to the heroes she loved—to King Arthur—to the Chevalier Bayard—to Richard the Lion Heart—the face of a man born to command, born to rule.
She had looked at it for perhaps only two minutes, but she could have sketched it accurately from memory. The dark hair was thrown back in masses—not in effeminate curls, but in the same waving lines that may be seen on the heads of famous Grecian statues; the forehead was white, broad, well-developed, rounded at the temples, full of ideality, of genius, of poetry, of thought; the brows were dark and straight as those of a Greek god; the eyes luminous and bright—she could not tell what they were like—they had dazzled her. The dark mustache did not hide a beautiful mouth that had nothing effeminate in it.
It was a face that filled her mind with thoughts of beauty. She mused over it. There was nobility, power, genius, loyalty, truth, in every feature. The voice had filled her ears with music.
"I wish," she thought, "he had given me some other command; I should like to obey him; I would do anything he told me; he has the face and the voice of a king. I have read of god-like men; now I have seen one. Shall I ever see him again? I can imagine that face flashing with indignation, eloquent with pleading, royal in command, softened in tenderness, eloquent in speech."
Her reverie was interrupted by the sound of a bell. "That must be for breakfast," she thought, and she hurried back to the house. She did not see the stranger follow her, with a smile still on his face.
Lady Vaughan was unusually gracious.