On his way to the drawing-room he deflected from the direct path, turning aside for a moment to the picture-gallery because for a reason of his own he wanted to take a look at Miles Hugo. He took a look at Miles Hugo oftener than Miss Alicia knew.
The gallery was dim and gloomy enough, now closing in in the purple-gray twilight. He walked through it without glancing at the pictures until he came to the tall boy in the satin and lace of Charles II period. He paused there only for a short time, but he stood quite near the portrait, and looked hard at the handsome face.
“Gee!” he exclaimed under his breath, “it's queer, gee!”
Then he turned suddenly round toward one of the big windows. He turned because he had been startled by a sound, a movement. Some one was standing before the window. For a second's space the figure seemed as though it was almost one with the purple-gray clouds that were its background. It was a tall young woman, and her dress was of a thin material of exactly their color—dark-gray and purple at once. The wearer held her head high and haughtily. She had a beautiful, stormy face, and the slender, black brows were drawn together by a frown. Tembarom had never seen a girl as handsome and disdainful. He had, indeed, never been looked at as she looked at him when she moved slightly forward.
He knew who it was. It was the Lady Joan girl, and the sudden sight of her momentarily “rattled” him.
“You quite gave me a jolt,” he said awkwardly, and knowing that he said it like a “mutt.” “I didn't know any one was in the gallery.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She spoke to him as though she were addressing an intruding servant. There was emphasis on the word “you.”
Her intention was so evident that it increased his feeling of being “rattled.” To find himself confronting deliberate ill nature of a superior and finished kind was like being spoken to in a foreign language.
“I—I'm T. Tembarom.” he answered, not able to keep himself from staring because she was such a “winner” as to looks.
“T. Tembarom?” she repeated slowly, and her tone made him at once see what a fool he had been to say it.