A flush at the remembrance of his visitors of the night before and their errand crossed his face, and he glanced instinctively toward the chimney cupboard to see if the door was safely locked.
“I beg your pardon.” he said, coming forward. “I hope I do not disturb you. I came for a book. This must be Miss Manning, I think. How comes it that I have not had the pleasure of an introduction? They told me you had not come. Yes, I met your father on the steamer coming over. Is he present this evening?”
It was the easy, graceful tone and way he had, the same that had elicited the notice of the “ladye of high degree,” only somehow now he had an instinctive feeling that it would take more than a tone and a manner to charm this young woman, and as she turned her clear eyes upon him and smiled, the feeling grew that she was worth charming.
He began to understand the admiration of those awkward boys and the feeling that had prompted their visit of the night before, and to consider himself honored since he had a part in their admiration.
Margaret Manning was prepared to receive him as a friend. Had she not heard great things of him? And she knew him at once. There was a fine photogravure of him given by his mother at the request of the school—and unknown to himself—hanging in the main room of the Forest Hill Mission.
Their conversation turned almost immediately upon the picture. John Stanley told how he had seen the original and its artist abroad, and how proud he was to be the owner of this copy. The disagreeable experiences he had passed through on account of it seemed to have slipped from his mind for the time being.
She listened with interest, the fine, intelligent play of expression on her face which made it ever an inspiration to talk with her.
“How you will enjoy reading over the whole account of the Last Supper right where you can look at that face,” she said wistfully, looking up at the picture. “It seems to me I can almost hear him saying, ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.’ ”
He looked at her wonderingly, and saw the mark of that peace which passeth understanding upon her forehead, and again there appeared to him in startling contrast his vision of the “ladye of high degree,” and he pondered it afterward in his heart.
“ ‘And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ He said that in the upper room,” she mused, and after a moment, “was it then too, that he said, ‘For I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you’? I can’t quite remember,” and her eyes roved instinctively about the elegantly furnished room in apparent search for something.