How, indeed? She bent her face on the ground, looking at the damage. What should she do? The veil was over the hedge, the spectacles were broken—how could she dare show her naked face? That face was rosy just then, as in former days, the eyes were bright, and Miss Carlyle caught their expression, and stared in very amazement.
“Good heavens above,” she uttered, “what an extraordinary likeness!” And Lady Isabel’s heart turned faint and sick within her.
Well it might. And, to make matters worse, bearing down right upon them, but a few paces distant, came Sir Francis Levison.
Would he recognize her?
Standing blowing in the wind at the turning of the road were Miss Carlyle and Lady Isabel Vane. The latter, confused and perplexed, was picking up the remnant of her damaged spectacles; the former, little less perplexed, gazed at the face which struck upon her memory as being so familiar. Her attention, however, was called off the face to the apparition of Sir Francis Levison.
He was close upon them, Mr. Drake and the other comrade being with him, and some tagrag in attendance, as usual. It was the first time he and Miss Carlyle had met face to face. She bent her condemning brow, haughty in its bitter scorn, full upon him, for it was not in the nature of Miss Carlyle to conceal her sentiments, especially when they were rather of the strongest. Sir Francis, when he arrived opposite, raised his hat to her. Whether it was done in courtesy, in confused unconsciousness, or in mockery, cannot be told. Miss Carlyle assumed it to have been the latter, and her lips, in their anger grew almost as pale as those of the unhappy woman who was cowering behind her.
“Did you intend that insult for me, Francis Levison?”
“As you please to take it,” returned he, calling up insolence to his aid.
“You dare to lift off your hat to me! Have you forgotten that I am Miss Carlyle?”
“It would be difficult for you to be forgotten, once seen.”