When she looked up she saw a man standing on the opposite side of the brook, and looking across at her with steadfast, gleaming eyes.
He was a tall man, dressed in ragged clothing like a common tramp. His face was blackened to the hue of a negro's by soot or charcoal, but the finely molded features were those of a white man. In the waning light Jaquelina could see that his wrists were manacled, and heavy irons were fastened about his ankles, from which depended chains that had been severed in two.
[CHAPTER XV.]
At that sudden and terrible-looking apparition, Jaquelina remained for a moment perfectly motionless.
Surprise and terror had rendered her for the time perfectly incapable of speech or motion.
Meanwhile the gleaming black eyes of the man, looking inordinately large and fierce in his blackened face, were riveted upon her beautiful, pallid features.
"Miss Meredith, do you not know me?" he asked, breaking the silence at last, in a low, deep, angry voice.
Jaquelina shivered and started at that intense voice. His name fell from her lips in a gasp:
"Gerald Huntington!"