She was still in a kind of half reverie when the gong sounded, and looking at the clock, she perceived that the short hand pointed to seven.

Taking out her white muslin gown, Meg began to array herself with care.

She had never devoted much thought to her toilet before, but she was eager to please her benefactor. She coiled her brown hair smoothly round her head, and fastened a red rose in her bodice. Then she waited till the gong sounded again.

Timidity once more overcame her as she descended the grand staircase; realizing at every step more keenly that the moment had come when she would be ushered into the presence of her benefactor. Two footmen in plush and gold lace stood on either side of an open door; this was the room in which her host awaited her.

Meg paused on the threshold. A somewhat short elderly man in evening dress stood near the table. This was no familiar figure; but she remained where she was, overwhelmed with emotion, looking dumbly at this protector of her forlorn youth. She could not speak for her beating heart. Her shyness was enhanced by the silence of her host. He did not advance to greet her; he did not stretch out a hand of welcome. He stood close to a chair in a somewhat deferential att.i.tude. Then suddenly Meg recognized him to be the butler who had received her in the hall on her arrival. She had not identified him in her fright.

With a painful sense of the absurdity of her mistake she took the seat he placed for her and looked hurriedly round the table. The flower and fruit-decked expanse, the white cloth, the plate and delicate gla.s.s, glowed rosily under the crimson-shaded suspension lamp; no second cover was laid, no other chairs near the board. She was to dine alone.

Meg had scarcely realized this when a plateful of soup was placed before her, and she felt the two magnificent lackeys standing on either side of her chair, watching as she dipped the spoon and raised it to her lips.

The thought that she was to eat her dinner under the inspection of this frigid and observant gaze struck her with palsied nervousness. She upset a tumbler as she stretched her hand for the salt-cellar; she helped herself to everything that was offered to her by her attendants; she allowed the butler without protest to fill the gla.s.ses at her side with claret, hock, and champagne, and let the beverages stand there untasted.

In the awful silence she started when the door opened. After awhile the tension of her nervousness was relieved by a freakish fancy. What a good story it would make to tell the girls in the dormitory! How she had sat in a skimpy muslin dress in this splendid room, hung round with family portraits which seemed to be watching her; of the sumptuous repast served to her alone; of the obsequiousness of the servant men; how terrified she had been; with what clumsiness she had behaved, and with what attempts at dignity!

There came a moment at last when, every trace of heavier diet having been removed, the servants retired, after having placed the dessert and three decanters of wine before Meg. She drew a breath of relief as she made sure that she was alone. A girlish love of fruit came over her, and she helped herself to a bunch of grapes. She remembered she had once heard the story of a girl who for a day had been mistaken for a queen.

The people cheered her, the courtiers obeyed her slightest wish. Meg smiled as she thought this girl must have felt as she felt to-night.

She glanced around as she ate her grapes. The table made a patch of brilliancy in the long room, the corners of which remained dusky.

Gleaming frames caught the light of the suspension lamp, and here and there revealed the superb apparel of the dignified full-length men and women gazing down upon her from the walls. As Meg's eyes traveled slowly round this stately company she was vaguely revolving in her mind how she would summon up courage to leave this room and make her way back to her own.

Presently her eyes rested on what looked like a blank framed s.p.a.ce at the furthest end of the apartment. She could not distinguish the cause of this effect. It puzzled her, so she rose from her chair and drew nearer. She found it was a picture with its face turned to the wall.

The discovery affected her like the touch of a spectral hand. That disgraced canvas riveted her attention. What did it mean? She looked away; but the spell continued to work, and once more she drew near. The sight of its disgrace brought a piteous feeling. It looked like an outcast in the midst of this painted pageantry of splendid men and women.

Whose face was it thus turned away? Was it that of a man or of a woman?

Meg felt as if she would give anything to know. Everything else faded in interest near the story of that picture. She tried vainly to discover a trace of revealing outline. The fascination grew too strong. She got up on a chair and tried with all her strength to turn the picture round and get a glimpse. She had succeeded in moving it slightly when she heard behind her the door open.

Meg dropped her hold of the frame and turned round.

The housekeeper was standing on the threshold looking at her aghast.

"Miss Beecham, what are you doing?"

"I was trying to get a peep at this picture," said Meg, jumping down.

"Why is its face turned to the wall?"

Mrs. Jarvis shook her head. "Why, miss, it would be worth a servant's place in this house to turn that picture round. Sir Malcolm Loftdale has forbidden the name of the person whose portrait that is to be mentioned.

He never comes into this room. I am sure it is because of that picture."

"Indeed; I am sorry," said Meg in some confusion.

"I could tell you all about that picture, Miss Beecham. I have been in this house these thirty years, and I was there the day it was turned to the wall. It was a day I'll never forget--not so long as I live; but it's laid upon me not to tell," went on the housekeeper, who looked packed with mystery.

"Do not think I would wish you to tell me," exclaimed Meg hurriedly. "I would not--not on any account." Then she asked with abrupt transition: "Shall I see Sir Malcolm Loftdale to-night?"

"No, Miss Beecham, not to-night. Sir Malcolm sent me down to ask you to excuse him. He is old, miss, and not strong. He hopes that you will forgive his not welcoming you himself, and that you will make yourself at home."

"Thank Sir Malcolm Loftdale for me, and say that I feel very grateful to him for his hospitality," Meg replied, relieved yet vaguely nettled by her host's neglect.

"Coffee is served in the drawing-room, Miss Beecham."

"Thank you; but I think I shall return to my room," said Meg.

She hurried up the staircase. A confused pain seemed to haunt the surrounding splendor. It oppressed her as might the scent of flowers in a room of death.

When she opened the door of her pretty room, the sea-green silk curtains of which had been drawn, the daintiness and comfort contrasted pleasantly with the alien magnificence outside, saddened as it was by a jarring note of brooding grief. A black cat had found its way in, and came forward to meet Meg with tail uplifted and a welcoming purr. The homeliness of the scene revived her drooping spirits.

CHAPTER XXI.

SIR MALCOLM LOFTDALE.

Meg had more than once explored the house and the grounds. She had performed the pilgrimage under the expansive wing of Mrs. Jarvis; she had wandered alone over the mansion and rambled through the park, feeling delight in the old-world charm of the place. The touch of tragic mystery brought into the atmosphere by the picture on which a ban had been laid now added to the spell of its fascination. The lofty rooms, with somber gilt or painted ceilings; the faded tapestries and brocaded hangings; the dusky tones of the furniture, upon which the sunbeams fell with an antique glow, appeared to her steeped in the mystery of a.s.sociations. Every room seemed a chapter in an unknown story, the thought of which kindled her fancy. The park, with its lengthening vistas, its sylvan retreats, and patriarchal trees, a branch of the silver river sweeping through its stately alleys; the stretches of lawns, the flower-gardens, the gla.s.s structures in which bloomed a tropical vegetation, enchanted her.

It was like living in a picture, she thought, to live amid such peaceful, beautiful, finely ordered surroundings, whose past haunted them like a presence. After the crude and noisy bustle of immature possibilities to which she was accustomed, the wearied splendors of this domain came to her as a revelation of novel possibilities in the setting of life.

A week had elapsed, Meg had almost grown accustomed to the place, and yet she had not seen its owner. She had at first begun every morning by asking Mrs. Jarvis if there was a probability of her seeing Sir Malcolm Loftdale during the course of the day, but the housekeeper on each occasion had given an evasive answer, and Meg now asked no more. She might have felt wounded at this breach of hospitality had not the behavior of the servants precluded all idea of a slight being offered to her. They paid her obsequious attention, they obeyed her slightest expressed wish. She might have imagined herself the queen of the domain.

The solitude, the homage paid to her, the regard for her comfort, reminded her of a fairy tale where the host remains unseen and the heroine lives in splendor and isolation. She wondered often why her benefactor kept himself thus sternly secluded. She began to think it could not be the old gentleman she had seen in her childhood; why should he avoid her? If it were a stranger was it because of some unsightly physical affliction, some form of mental derangement? was it a brooding melancholy that caused him morbidly to shrink from contact with outsiders? A longing to be of comfort mingled with the curiosity she felt concerning her mysterious host.

One late afternoon as she rambled in the park she saw, framed in by trees as in a picture, the figure of a tall, slender, white-haired gentleman walking toward her. She recognized him at once. It was the mysterious stranger, twice met in her childhood. He held his head high.

What a head it was! There was an eagle cast of physiognomy, a chill expression in the eyes, a hardness on the lips. He wore a country suit and carried a heavy gold-headed stick; a diamond stud on a jeweled seal caught the light and shone. These little details curiously impressed themselves upon Meg. She stopped, asking herself if this was the master of the house?

The stranger glanced toward her, lifted his hat, and with an old-world salute pa.s.sed on. Meg determined not to look after him; but she could not resist the temptation, and turning round she saw him ascending the steps of the house. On questioning the housekeeper, Meg found that the picturesque old gentleman was Sir Malcolm Loftdale.

Next morning Meg was standing arranging some flowers in the window of the little room she had chosen for her morning retreat--it looked out on a pleasant side alley of the grounds in the center of which stood a sun dial--when the door suddenly opened, and the gentleman she had seen in the park on the previous evening entered unannounced. He did not advance beyond the threshold, but he closed the door after him and kept one hand on the handle. He did not extend the other in greeting.

At sight of him Meg's heart fluttered, and she acknowledged by a flurried inclination of her head his stately bow.

He was handsomer than she had imagined him to be; but the light of his stern blue eye remained cold, and there was a remoteness in the steady glance that he fixed upon her.

"I beg you, Miss Beecham, to excuse me for not having welcomed you before," he said in a voice of cold courtesy. "I trust you will forgive me for exercising a privilege age is apt freely to indulge near youth--that of following the usual routine of life. I am a solitary, my life is organized for loneliness."

"You have been most kind, sir," muttered Meg, in a tumult of timidity.

"My servants have received strict orders to attend to your comfort. I hope they have been attentive?"

"They have been very attentive," replied Meg.

"I fear the days may seem to drag heavily for you, Miss Beecham," the old gentleman resumed, without a shadow of softening in the coldness of his voice or the scrutiny of his glance. "I have thought--to relieve their tedium--that you might like a horse. I will have one broken for your use. There are pretty rides about."

"I do not know how to ride, sir," said Meg, touched and bewildered by the thoughtfulness and repellent manner of her host.

"My old groom would teach you; he is a most trustworthy and respectable man," said Sir Malcolm.

"Thank you sir," said Meg. Then with desperate courage, as her benefactor seemed about to retire, she added breathlessly: "I should not feel lonely, sir--not--if you would let me be with you a little--if you would let me read for you, or do something for you. You have been so good to me all those years."