Margaret ran into the house, her heart beating fast, the color coming
and going in her cheeks. To her amazement and annoyance, she felt that
she was actually trembling! Well, if not trembling, quivering, as a
leaf quivers when the summer wind passes over its bosom.
What was this that she had done? Notwithstanding her grandmother's
warning and her own good resolutions, she had spent--how long!--nearly
an hour talking alone with Lord Blair Leyton. And he had given her a
rose! Not only given it to her, but fastened it in the antimacassar.
She could feel his fingers touching her still, as it seemed to her! She
looked down at the rose, gleaming like a spot of blood on the white
cotton of the antimacassar, then, with a sudden gesture, she went to
pull it out and fling it through the window; but she averted her hand
even as it touched the velvet leaves. Yes, she had done wrong; she
ought not to have spoken to him, ought not to have remained with him,
and most certainly ought not to have taken the rose from him.
She saw now how wrong she had been. They used to call her "Wild
Margaret," "Mad Madge," when she was a child, but she had been trying
to become quiet, and dignified, and discreet, and, as it seemed to
her, had succeeded, until this wicked young man had tempted her into
flirting--was it flirting?--in the starlight.
"You look flushed, my dear," said Mrs. Hale. "Are you tired?"
"I think I am a little," said Margaret, longing to get to the solitude
of her own room.
"It's the country air," said the old lady, nodding. "It always makes
people from London sleepy. Was it pleasant in the garden?" she added,
innocently.
Margaret's face flushed.
"Y--es, very," she replied; then she was going on to tell the old lady
of her meeting with Lord Blair, but stopped short.
"I think I will go up to bed now," she said, and giving the old lady a
kiss, she went up-stairs to her own room. There she thought over every
word that the young lord said, and that she herself had spoken. There
had been no harm in any of it, surely! He had spoken respectfully,
almost reverentially, and even when he had given her the rose he had
done it with as much diffidence and high bred courtesy as if she had
been a countess. Surely there had been no harm in it.
It was a lovely morning when she woke, and dressing herself she went
straight to the picture gallery. As she left the room Lord Blair's red
rose seemed to smile at her from the dressing table, and she took it up
and carried it in her hand. It was just possible that she might meet
him; if so, it would be as well to have the rose with her, for give
it back she meant to, if a chance afforded. The light in the gallery
could not have been better, and she set to work at first languidly, but
presently with more spirit, and was becoming perfectly absorbed, when
she heard a voice singing the refrain of the last popular London song.
It was a man's voice, it could be no other than Lord Blair's, and in a
minute or two afterward she heard him enter the gallery.
She heard him coming toward her with a quick step, and looking up with
his eyes fixed upon her with eager pleasure. He was dressed in the suit
of tweeds in which he had looked so picturesque on the morning of the
fight, and in his buttonhole he wore a white rose. It drew her eyes
toward it, and she knew it at once--it was the finest of the roses she
had placed in his room.
"Miss Hale!" he exclaimed, holding out his hand, while his eyes beamed
with the frank, glad light of youth when it is pleased. "This is luck!
I only strolled in here by mere chance--and--and to think of my finding
you here! How early you are! And what a lot you have done!" staring
admiringly at the canvas. "I hope you didn't catch cold last night?"
"No, my lord," said Margaret, as coldly as if her voice were frozen.
He looked at her with a quick questioning.
"I'm off almost directly," he said, with something like a sigh. "It's
a bore having to go back to London and leave this place a morning like
this. I had no idea it was so--so jolly, until----" he stopped; he was
going to add: "until last night."
Margaret remained silent, dabbing on little spots of color delicately.
"I quite envy you your stay here," he went on, looking in her grave
face, which had become somewhat pale since his arrival. "That jolly
little garden, and--and this grand gallery. I hope you will be happy,
and--and enjoy yourself."
"Thank you my lord," coldly as before.
He looked at her with a slightly puzzled frown.
"Yes, I should like to stay; but I can't--for the best of all reasons,
I haven't been invited, don't you know."
Margaret said nothing, but carefully mixed some colors on her palette.
"And so--and so I'm off," he said, with a sudden sigh. "Perhaps we
shall meet in London, Miss Hale."
"It is not likely," said Margaret gravely.
"So you said last night," he responded; "but I shall live in hopes.
Yes. London's only a little place, after all, you know, and--and we
may meet. Well, I'll say good-bye!"
"Good-bye, my lord," she said, affecting not to see his outstretched
hand.
"Won't you shake hands?" he said with a laugh, which died away as she
took up the rose and placed it in his extended palm.
"Will you take back this flower, my lord?" she said quietly, but with a
trembling quiver on her lips.
"Take back?" he stammered. "Take back the rose I gave you last night!"
he went on with astonishment. "Why? what have I done to offend you?"
and he stared from the rose to her face.
"You have done nothing to offend me, my lord," said Margaret quickly,
and with a vivid blush, which angered her beyond expression. "Nothing
whatever, but----"
"But--well?" he said as she paused.
"But," she went on, lifting her eyes to his bravely--"but I do not
think I ought to take a flower from you, my lord."
"Good lord, why not?" he demanded, with not unreasonable astonishment.
Margaret looked down. But she was no coward.
"I will say more than that," she said in a low but steady voice. "I
ought not to have remained in the garden with you last night, Lord
Leyton. I thought so last night, I am sure of it now. And if I ought
not to have stayed talking with you, I certainly ought not to have
accepted a flower from you! I beg your pardon, and--there is your rose!"
A look of pain crossed his handsome face.
"You haven't told me why yet," he said, after a pause.
Margaret bit her lip, and was silent for a second or two, then she said:
"Lord Leyton, there should be, can be, no acquaintance between you and
me----"
"Now stop!" he said. "I know what you are going to say; you are going
to talk some nonsense about my being a viscount and you being something
different, and all that! As if you were not a lady, and as if any one
could be better than that! Yes, they can, by George! and you _are_
better, for you are an artist! A difference between us--yes, yes, I
should think there was, between a useless fellow like myself and a
clever, beautiful----"
"My lord!" said Margaret, flushing, then looking at him with her brows
drawn together.
"I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon; I do indeed! But, all the same,"
he said, defiantly, "it's true! You are beautiful, but I don't rely
on that. I say an artist and a lady is the equal of any man or woman
alive, and if that's the reason you fling my flower back to me----"
"I didn't fling it, my lord," said Margaret, gravely.
"I'm a brute!" he said, penitently. "The difference between a brute
and--and an angel! That's it. No, you didn't fling it, but it's just as
if you had, isn't it now?"
"You will take back the flower, Lord Leyton, please?" she almost
pleaded. "I don't want to fling it, as you say, out of the window."
He stood looking at her.
"How--how you must hate and despise me, by Jove!" he said.
Margaret flushed.
"You have no right to say that, my lord, because I see that I acted
unwisely last night. How can I hate or despise one who is a stranger to
me?"
"Yes, that's it; I'm a stranger, and you mean to keep me one!" he said,
half bitterly, half sorrowfully. "Well, I can't complain; I'm not fit
for you to know. Why, even my own flesh and blood are anxious to see
the back of me! Yes, you are right, Miss Margaret."
He dwelt on the name sadly, using it unconsciously.
"Oh, no, no!" she said, wrung to the heart at the thought of wounding
him so mercilessly. "It's not that! It's not of you I thought, but of
myself."
"Of yourself yes," he said. "Communication with me is a kind of
pollution; you cannot touch tar, you know! Oh, I understand! Well"--he
hung his head--"I'll do as you tell me; I can't do less. I'll take my
poor rose----" He stopped short, and something seemed to strike him.
"But if I do, I must return you this," and he gently unfastened the
white one from his coat, and held it out to her.
Margaret put out her hand irresolutely.
"Oh, take it!" he said recklessly. "It is one out of the bowl you gave
me."
"I gave you?" she said.
"Yes," he said; "you picked them yourself, the girl told me so. I asked
her. And you put them in my room. If I take your rose back you must
take mine."
"Well," she said, and she took it slowly, and laid it on the table
beside her.
He drew a long breath, then the color came into his face and the wild,
daring Ferrers' spirit shone in his eyes.
"That's an exchange," he said. "It's a challenge and an acceptance.
Don't you see what you have done in cutting me off and flinging me
aside, Miss Margaret?"
"What have I done?" said Margaret.
"Yes! You have given me back my rose, but you forget that you have worn
it, that it has been in your dress, that you have touched it, that it's
like a part of yourself. And you have taken _my_ rose, which has been
in my room all night, while I dreamt of you----"
"Lord Leyton!" she panted, half rising.
"Yes!" he said, confronting her with the sudden passion which lay
dormant in him and always, like a tiger, ready to spring to the
surface. "You can throw my offer of friendship in my face, you can put
me coldly aside, and--and wipe out last night as if it had never been,
as if you had done some great wrong in talking to such a man as I am;
but you can't rob me of the rose you have touched, ah! and worn."
"Give--give it me back!" she exclaimed, with a trepidation which was
not altogether anger or fear. "Give it me back, my lord. You have no
right----"
"To keep it! Haven't I?" he retorted. "What! when you forced it back on
me! No, I will not give it you back! You may do what you like with the
white one. You will fling it on the fire, I've no doubt. I can't help
it. But this one, _yours_, I keep! It is mine. I will never part with
it. And whenever I look at it I will remember how--until you discovered
that I was not fit to associate with you, such a bad lot that you
couldn't even keep a flower I gave you!--I'll remember that you have
worn it near your heart."
White as herself, with a passion which had carried him beyond all
bounds, he raised the red rose to his lips and kissed it, not once only
but thrice.
Then, as he saw her face change, her lips tremble, his passion melted
away, and all penitent and remorseful, he bent toward her.
"Forgive me!" he said, as if half bewildered; "I--I didn't know what I
was saying. I--I am a savage! Yes, that's the name for me! Forgive me,
and--good-bye!"
He lingered on the words till they seemed to fill the room with their
music, low as they had been spoken. Then he turned.
Margaret found her voice.
"My lord--Lord Leyton. Stop!"
He stopped and turned.
"Give me back the rose, please," she said, firmly.
"No!" he said, his eyes flashing again. "Nothing in this world would
induce me to give it to you, or to any one else. I'll keep it till I
die! I'll keep it to remind me of last night--and of you!"
He stood for a moment looking at her steadily--if the passionate
glance could be called steady; then the thick folds of the velvet
curtain fell and hid him from her sight.
Margaret stood for a moment motionless.
Lord Leyton strode through the corridor into the hall. He scarcely knew
where he was going, or saw the objects before him.
"The dog-cart is ready, my lord," said a footman.
Mr. Stibbings stood with respectful attention beside the door.
"Good-morning, my lord; the portmanteau is in----" he glanced at the
rose which Lord Blair still held in his hand. "If your lordship would
like to take some flowers with you, I will get some: there is time----"
"Flowers? Flowers?" said Lord Blair, confusedly; then, with an
exclamation, he hid the rose in his breast and sprung into the cart.
The horse bounded forward and dashed down the avenue, Lord Blair
looking straight before him like a man only half awakened.
Suddenly, seeing and yet scarcely seeing, he noticed a tall, wiry
figure lounging against the sign-post in the center of the village
green.
"Stop!" he said to the groom.
He pulled up and Lord Blair beckoned to the man.
Pyke resisted the summons for a second or two, then he slouched up to
the dog-cart with his hands in his pockets.
"Good-morning, my man," said Lord Blair. "I hope you're none the worse
for our little set-to?"
"_I'm_ not the worse, and I sha'n't be," retorted Pyke, lifting his
evil eyes for a moment to the handsome face then fixing them on the
last button of Lord Blair's waistcoat.
"That's all right," said Lord Blair. "I see you've got a bruise or two
still left," and he laughed. "And I dare say I have. Well, here is some
ointment for yours," and he held out some silver.
Pyke opened his hand, and his fingers closed over it.
"That's all right," said Blair again, cheerfully. "We part friends, I
hope?"
"Yes, we part friends," said Pyke, but the expression of his face would
have suited "We part enemies" equally well.
"Well, we shall meet again, I dare say," said Blair. "Good-morning."
"Yes, we shall meet again," said the man, and as he spoke he shot a
vindictive glance at Blair's face. "Oh, yes, my lord, we shall meet
again," he snarled as the dog-cart drove on. "And it will be my turn
then. Ointment, eh! It will be a powerful ointment as 'ud do you any
good when I've done with you!"