Again he laughed--with unpleasant meaning. "You certainly look to be very much at home." He moved confidently to the easel stool and, seating himself continued with a leering smile, "What's the matter with my taking the artist's place for a little while--at least, until he comes?"
The girl was too innocent to understand his assumption but her pure mind could not fail to sense the evil in his words.
"I had permission to come here this afternoon," she said--her voice trembling a little with the fear that she did not understand. "Won't you go, please? Neither Mr. King nor Mr. Lagrange are at home."
"I do not doubt your having permission to come here," he returned, with meaning stress upon the word, "permission". "I see you even carry a key to this really delightful room." He motioned with his head toward the door where he had seen the key in the lock, as she had left it.
At this, she grasped a hint of the man's thought and, for an instant, drew hack in shame. Then, suddenly with a burst of indignant anger, she took a step toward him, demanding clearly; "Are you saying that I am in the habit of coming here to meet Mr. King?"
He laughed mockingly. "Really, my dear, no one, seeing you, now, could blame the man for giving you a key to this place where he is popularly supposed to be undisturbed. Mr. King is neither such a virtuous saint, nor so engrossed in his art, as to resent the companionship of such a vision of loveliness--simply because it comes in the form of good flesh and blood. Why be angry with me?"
Her cheeks were crimson as she said, again, "Will you go?"
"Not until you have settled the terms of peace," he answered with that leering smile. "Fortune has favored me, this afternoon, and I mean to profit by it."
For an instant, she looked at him--frightened and dismayed. Suddenly, with the flash-like quickness that was a part of her physical inheritance from her mountain life, she darted past him; eluding his effort to detain her--and was out of the building.
With an oath, the man, acting upon the impulse of the moment, ran after her. Outside the door of the studio, he caught a glimpse of her white dress as she disappeared into the rose garden. In the garden, he saw her as she slipped through the little gate in the far corner of the hedge, into the orange grove. Recklessly he followed. Among the trees, he glimpsed, again, the white flash of her skirts, and dashed forward. At the farther edge of the grove that walled in the little yard where Sibyl lived, he saw her standing by the kitchen door. But between the girl and that last row of close-set trees, waiting his coming, stood the woman with the disfigured face.