She turned away her calm, happy face. His warnings fell on deaf ears, for, as ever, she had chosen her own path and would not depart from it.
"Now," said Gay, "perhaps we had best get through with this affair at once; you have borne it thus far with far more fortitude than I had expected. Will you see the colonel to-night?"
She started, and flashed a quick look in his face.
"Is he here, Dr. Gay?" breathed she, with emotion.
"He came in with me," said the doctor; "He asked for you, and is waiting in the drawing-room."
The thin face of Margaret flushed hotly. One cannot doubt that a flicker of memory's lamp shone out in that moment, revealing the bitter past to her shrinking soul, but she dropped the curtain over that picture quickly, and bade the doctor bring him in.
So Dr. Gay went out with a satisfied smile, and brought the soldier in.
She rose to greet him, tall, majestic as a daughter of the gods, with her scarlet shawl draping her shoulders regally; and her quivering, spirited countenance seemed to glow with a new and beautiful effulgence, as if the glad soul illuminated each plain feature with rose lights. Her dark-fringed eyelids hid the beaming eyes for a moment of timid hesitancy, and she drooped before the stranger like a conquered empress; and then she flashed a full, sweet face upon him whom she had mourned as dead.
And the gaze grew fixed and troubled, the outstretched hand fell slowly to her side—she stood speechless. How often had her faithful memory held up to her the portrait of St. Udo Brand—grand, bold, fearless as she had beheld him in that hour of his fury; when the white lights of scorn were flashing from his straightly-leveled eyes, and the wrath of a king sat on his regal brow.
How was it that he cringed in the doorway there and with a forced stare met her gaze of bewilderment? Why did his lurid eyeballs shift and shrink, and grow small and hare-like, when they had ever met hers, with the full glare of an eagle? How had these thin lines of patient waiting, and anxiety, and craft, escaped her intent scrutiny when last she had lifted her outraged eyes to that face.