It came to her with a dull sense of conviction that this thing was not to be; that she was never to install St. Udo Brand within his rights; that she was truly the Marplot who had ruined him. They would meet never more on the golden sands of time, that she might point to him the better way, and be his joy. Oh! vain dream, and harshly wakened from.
She uttered not a word, but turned from her now silent companions, and covered her face.
When they reached the hotel Margaret retired to her room, and the lawyer and the illustrious chevalier commenced a systematic search for the English colonel, which, to judge from its success, seemed likely to last forever.
And poor Margaret wore the days away in sick dismay over her suddenly clouded fairy-dream; and her strange face grew thinner, sharper, more unearthly in its transparency than ever; and her superb form passing so often drearily to and fro in the walled-up hotel garden among the snow-laden shrubs and trees, arrested many a curious eye at the hotel windows to dwell upon the lonely British lady, with compassionate interest.
Some weeks after their arrival, Margaret noted a new face at the hotel table.
Not that new faces were much of a novelty in that everchanging scene, but the face of this woman was so attractive that every eye round the lunch-table fastened on her as she sauntered in, dressed in a driving habit, and seated herself vis a vis to Margaret.
"Mon Dieu! that's a fine creature!" muttered the chevalier in his beard; "what a glorious head she has—by gar!"
"Humph," grumbled Davenport, at Margaret's other side; "bad egg."
Margaret met the full gaze of a pair of fascinating eyes, green-tinged, and yet chameleon-like, changing with every ripple of the soul from green to flashing black, or tender gray, or handsome brown.
The small and well-shaped head which had awakened such rapturous admiration from the chevalier, was poised delicately upon a neck round and white and bending as a swan's. The hair, a light, gold-brown, shone sometimes molten in the sunlight, sometimes flaxen. It seemed to possess the chameleon-powers of the eyes, and took to itself all shapes and tinges, as the bird-like creature flashed a look from side to side; and one long snake-like tress floated carelessly beneath her vail down her back, and was suffered to ripple and twist itself into tiny ringlets, or waves, or coils, just as its willful nature impelled it.