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66 | «WILD MARGARET.
‘on his clean-cut face, which might have been a marble
mask,
‘*T understand,” he said, after the pause. ‘“ At any
cost? You will not upbraid, reproach me in the: future,
whatever may happen?’’
‘No, Ishall not! At any cost!’ she repeated, meeting
his cold glance. .
He stood regarding the wall: above her head for a mo-
ment, then, without a word, went out and left her. |
Slowly, impassively, he paced down the stairs, his eyes
fixed on the open doorway and the street beyond, bub
reaching the hall, which happened to be empty, he paused,
and with his foot on the doorstep, he turned-round and
smiled.
It was a peculiar smile and difficult to analyze, but sup-
' posing a man had caught a wild animal in a trap and had
left it hard and fast, to be killed at his leisure, that. man |
might smile as Austin Ambrose smiled as he looked round
the hall of Violet Graham’s house-in Park Lane. '
oo. ‘CHAPTER VIII. os
MarGAret had never been in love. If any one had asked
her why not, she would have said that she was too busy,
and hadn’t time. Young men had admired her, and some
few, the artists whom she met now and again, had fallen
in love with her, but no one had ever spoken of the great
mystery to her, for there was something about Margaret,
with all her wildness, an indescribable maiden dignity
which kept men silent. oo
Lord Blair had been the first to speak to her in tones
hinting at passion, and it is little wonder that his words
clung to her, and utterly refused to be dismissed from her
mind, though she tried hard and honestly to forget them;
even endeavored to laugh at them, as the wild words of a
wild young man, who would probably forget that he had
ever spoken them, and forget her, too, an hour or two
after he had got to London. :
But she could not. She said not a word of what had oc-
curred to old Mrs. Hale, for she felt that she could not |
have borne the flow of talk, and comment, and rebuke
which the old lady would pour out. It would have been
better if she had spoken and told her all; a thing divided
becomes halved, a thing dwelt upon grows and gets magnl
ed. oo
Margaret brooded over the wild words Lord Blair had
said until every sentence was engraved on her mind;-even
the,expression of his face as he stood before her, defiant
asa Greek god, got impressed upon her memory so that —
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