What really determined him to seek Margaret's companionship was a desire to fathom her heart. She was her father's confidante, and as such might be dangerous, or useful. To have refused him Margaret knew would only have made matters worse. Much as she disliked him, she was grateful to him for having set the little Frenchman's arm; so she ran into the house and returned in a moment, her fresh young face shaded by a brim of straw covered with moss roses.
"What a pretty hat!" exclaimed Sperry, as they crossed the compound to the trail leading down to the brook. "Oh, you young New York girls know just what is and what is not becoming."
"Do you think so?" returned Margaret vaguely, not knowing just what answer to make. "It was my own idea."
Sperry looked at the young girl, fresh and trim in her youth, and a memory rushed over him of his Paris days. Margaret reminded him of Lucille, he thought to himself, all except the eyes—Lucille's eyes were black.
"Yes, it's adorable," he replied, drinking in the fresh beauty of the young girl. "You are very pretty, my dear—just like your mother." This line of attack had always succeeded in sounding the hearts of the young girls he had known.
The girl blushed—the freedom of his tone troubled, and then half frightened her. So much so that she walked on in silence, wishing she had not come. Then again it was the first time she had been entirely alone with him, and the feeling was not altogether a pleasant one. There was, too, a certain familiarity in his voice and manner which she would have resented in a younger man but which, somehow, she had to submit to.
She stopped abruptly as they came to a steep rock.
"Please go on ahead," she said with an appealing look in her brown eyes, as he put out his hand to help her down. "I can get down very well myself."
"Come, be sensible, little girl," he returned; "we must not have another accident to-day. Pretty ankles are as hard to mend as broken arms."
Again the colour mounted to her cheeks; no one had ever spoken to her in this way before.