It was a face that she had drawn very often lately in her idle moods, half
unconsciously sometimes--a bold handsome face, that offered none of those
difficulties by which some countenances baffle the skill of a painter. It
was the face of a man of whom she had told herself it was a sin even to
think; but the face haunted her somehow, and it seemed as if her pencil
reproduced it in spite of herself.
She was thinking as she drew near of Lady Geraldine's postponed wedding. It
would have been better that the marriage should have taken place; better
that the story should have ended to-day and that the frail link between
herself and George Fairfax should have been broken. That accident of Lord
Calderwood's death had made everything more or less uncertain. Would the
marriage ever take place? Would George Fairfax, with ample leisure for
deliberation, hold himself bound by his promise, and marry a woman to whom
he had confessed himself indifferent?
She was brooding over this question when she heard the thud of a horse's
hoofs upon the grass, and, looking up, saw a man riding towards her. He was
leaning across his horse's head, looking down at her in the next moment--a
dark figure shutting out the waving line of fir-trees and the warm light in
the western sky. "What are you doing there, Miss Lovel?" asked a voice that
went straight to her heart. Who shall say that it was deeper or sweeter
than, common voices? but for her it had a thrilling sound.
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